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Ube TIlniverBit^ ot Cbicago 

FOUNDED BY JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER 



<z^S''<^ 



THE SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNY- 
SON AS RELATED TO HIS TIME 



A DISSERTATION 

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL 
OF ARTS AND LITERATURE IN CANDIDACY FOR THE 
DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 

(DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY) 



BY 

WILLIAM CLARK GORDON 



CHICAGO 

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 

1906 



Ube Xllniversiti? ot Cbtcaao 

FOUNDED BY JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER 



THE SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNY- 
SON AS RELATED TO HIS TIME ^-5 ^ 



A DISSERTATION 

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL 

OF ARTS AND LITERATURE IN CANDIDACY FOR THE 

DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 

(DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY) 



BY 

WILLIAM CLARK GORDON 



CHICAGO 

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 

1906 






Gift. 



^ '06 



N 30 



PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 



PREFACE 

The following- pages were written originally 
as a thesis for the degree of doctor of philosophy 
at the University of Chicago. It was suggested 
by certain interested friends that the subject- 
matter herein contained might be of value to the 
students of sociology and of literature included 
in a larger public than is usually reached by the 
conventional thesis. The publication of this lit- 
tle volume is the answer to these kindly sugges- 
tions. 

The author ventures to hope that readers 
into whose hands this book may chance to fall 
may derive from its perusal some of the pleasure 
and profit that was his in acquiring- and shaping 
its material. The footnotes should be omitted 
by everyone who does not wish to make it a text- 
book. These, however, will be found a necessity 
by the careful student and will suggest the rich 
stores left in the ink-pot. 

The union of sociology and literature here ex- 
emplified and defended is, we believe, more than 
justified. It is to be commended. The work 
here attempted is capable of almost indefinite 



v» PREFACE 

extension, and, if entrusted to competent hands, 
may prove of great service to each department. 
This is a rich field for the student, and it is 
already white unto harvest. The task involved 
is not for the novice, but for the one trained in 
the peculiar methods and familiar with the facts 
and principles of both literature and sociology. 
It is to be earnestly hoped that master-workmen 
may in due season thrust their sharpened sickles 
into these waiting fields and gather therefrom 
rich and abundant harvests. 

W. C. G. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Literature as a Means of Social Ex- 
pression I 

1. The Character of Literature ii 

2. What Literature Does 15 

a) Studies and Portrays the Past .... 15 

b) Brings Society of its Own Time to Self- 

consciousness 24 

c) Embodies Highest Individual and Social 

Ideals 32 

3. The Methods of Literature 40 

II. Social Conditions in England in the Time 

of Tennyson 47 

III. Tennyson's Idea of Man 62 

IV. Tennyson's Idea of the Worth and Work 

OF Woman 72 

■ V. The Family 82 

VI. Society 100 

VII. Social Institutions 124 

1. The State 126 

2. The Church 152 

Vlll. Democracy and Progress 178 

IX. Summary and Conclusion 230 

Bibliography .- 251 

Index 253 



CHAPTER I 

LITERATURE AS A MEANS OF SOCIAL 
EXPRESSION 

It is by no means universally admitted that 
literature has any value for the student of social 
science. The litterateur is, as a rule, dominated 
by the artistic ideal. He insists that his art has 
a value in and of itself, entirely independent of 
any utilitarian purpose it may serve. He fre- 
quently resents any effort on the part of the so- 
cial philosopher to seek in his domain for facts 
out of which to construct a theory of society. 
He finds little justification for the attempt to set 
in relief the essential features of the associated 
life of the people whom he, as a literary artist, 
has wrought into his picture of the time. 

To affirm that literature is a field in which the 
student of society has a perfect right to seek for 
facts of real significance for his own science, is 
to arouse the opposition of certain zealous de- 
fenders of literary art. For the sociologist to go 
farther, and actually use for his own purposes 
the material which has been wrought into drama 
and novel and poem by the skilful hand and in- 



2 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

spired imagination of the maker of literature, is 
to commit what is considered a flagrant offense 
by some guardians of high artistic standards. 
To go even farther, and seek for the ideals by 
which the literary artist himself is governed, 
the object which he endeavors to accomplish, the 
motives determining his choice of scenes and 
characters, times and places, " to live inside the 
artist and see him breathe," and then persistently 
to ask for the social significance of this inner life 
of dramatist, novelist, and poet — that is by 
some considered an outrage. 

Yet the literary artist is not a more constant 
or wilful violator of the command, " Thou shalt 
love thy neighbor as thyself," than are other men. 
His zeal in defending his realm against the in- 
vasion of those whom he considers foreigners 
and barbarians is perhaps excessive, but he is con- 
tending for a principle which is in every way 
worthy of his most strenuous endeavors. The 
continued existence and exaltation of his art are 
dependent upon the successful maintenance of 
that principle. He demands that literature shall 
be something more than a tool in the hands of a 
clumsy reformer. It is to him something sacred, 
and is not to be " soiled by all ignoble use." 
He knows well enough that, if literature were to 
become merely a bludgeon in the hands of gar- 
rulous cranks and fanatical propagandists, it 



LITERATURE AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 3 

would instantly cease to be literature. Literary- 
history gives abundant proof of the direful re- 
sults of such misappropriation of the form of 
literary expression by those who have some pet 
theory to advance, or some supposed reform to 
advocate. The modern homily in verse or prose 
even the most charitable cannot call art. Sam- 
uel Richardson in 1740 published Pamela with an 
avowedly didactic purpose, but no one today 
would hesitate to say that his work would have 
been more successful, if his purpose had been 
less didactic and more artistic. The didactic 
novel or poem belongs to an earlier and lower 
stage in the development of literature than the 
work of artistic purpose. To return to that ear- 
lier and lower type would be in every sense a 
calamity. To literature this would mean the 
substitution of some very poor preaching for 
some very good art, and it is no secret that the 
supply of poor preaching in the world's market 
today is much greater than the demand. Fur- 
ther production of a commodity of which there is 
already an over-supply would be a misfortune, 
and ought to be discouraged by all who have at 
heart the real interests of society. In this gen- 
eral calamity sociology would share. 

Literature and sociology need to understand 
each other. They are not competitors, but part- 
ners. The closeness of their relationship has not 



4 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

been generally recognized, and is not recognized 
today, but it is none the less real and vital on 
that account. Sociology would have quite as 
good a right to guard its borders, and open fire 
upon the wandering trespassers and tramps of 
literature who seek to forage in the ill-defined 
fields of the science of society, as has literature 
to oppose the efforts of the sociologists to gather 
from fiction and poetry material to be made of 
social service. The standards of literature are 
scarcely in greater danger of being lowered by 
the prosaic loquacity of the sociologist than are 
the standards of sociological science by the grace- 
less inaccuracies and watery imaginings of much 
that purports to be literature. If the sociologist 
is met by the taunt that he cannot define his own 
science, he replies by asking the student of litera- 
ture : What is literature ? The period of silence 
that follows may well be employed by both ques- 
tioner and questioned in earnest reflection upon 
the infinities and the limitations of his own de- 
partment of special study. Each department has 
over its head an infinite heaven to which it is 
related, and under its feet a fertile soil in which 
to dig. Both may well give heed to the words 
of Carlyle, who was himself both a writer of 
literature and a student of society : " Let every 
man mind his own business, and do that for 
which he was made." 



LITERATURE AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 5 

Sociology, then, may be pardoned if it does 
not assume an apologetic attitude in seeking in 
literature valuable material to be used in its own 
department as it deems best. A man does not 
apologize for taking what belongs to him. 
Taunts and ridicule are not called for by the con- 
ditions existing in either department. If soci- 
ology cannot define itself, neither can literature 
define itself; for who can point to a definition of 
literature which is universally accepted? There 
is no occasion for criticism in this. Tennyson 
declares that " nothing can be defined that is 
worth defining," and it may be because these 
departments of knowledge are both so well worth 
defining that thus far definition has seemed im- 
possible. Literature is old. Sociology, as a dis- 
tinct science, is comparatively new. What lit- 
erature has not been able to accomplish for itself 
in centuries, sociology has failed to achieve for 
itself in the comparatively few years of its ex- 
istence as a distinct branch of knowledge. If 
literature has sufifered in its artistic quality by 
being made simply the vehicle of some social 
propaganda, sociology also has sufifered by the 
misrepresentations of makers of literature who 
have done much to strengthen the foolish im- 
pression that sociology means feeding tramps 
and going slumming. The literary pot may well 



6 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

hesitate to dwell too long and eloquently upon 
the blackness of the sociological kettle. 

The attitude of hostility or of condescension 
on the part of either toward the other is entirely 
without justification. It wholly misrepresents 
the true relation of these two great departments 
of human knowledge and of social service. They 
are really friends, and are mutually helpful. As 
a matter of fact, they are now rendering invalua- 
ble assistance to each other, though neither recog- 
nizes its indebtedness to the other. The removal 
of this ignorance would mean the removal of 
much of jealousy and foolish criticism. Emer- 
son knew that " light is the best policeman." 
It is also the best judge, arbitrator, peacemaker. 
It is certainly to be hoped that in the near future 
some one who combines the literary insight of 
Frederic Harrison with the social wisdom and 
breadth of Thomas Hill Green may reveal to us 
the close and vital connection between these two 
great branches of the tree of knowledge. 

In this study the point of view is primarily 
that of the student of society, and only second- 
arily that of the student of literature We ask: 
How does literature minister to social progress? 
What estimate is to be placed upon it as a means 
of social expression? These questions are, of 
course, entirely distinct from such queries as 
this: What service has sociology rendered to 



LITERATURE AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 7 

literature ? — a most interesting inquiry, which 
only a volume could answer satisfactorily. Fred- 
eric Harrison, speaking of the literary production 
of the Victorian Era, says : " Our literature to- 
day has many characteristics ; but its central note 
is the dominant influence of sociology — enthu- 
siasm for social truths as an instrument of social 
reform." ^ And again: " For good or for evil, 
our literature is now absorbed in the urgent so- 
cial problem, and is become but an instrument in 
the vast field of sociology — the science of socie- 
ty." ^ This is certainly of interest as indicating 
the opinion of one writer of authority concerning 
literature's debt to sociology. Miss Vida D. 
Scudder, in Social Ideals in English Letters, has 
given distinct and intelligent recognition to the 
same indebtedness in a much wider field of Eng- 
lish literature. Both of these writers are skilful 
literary critics, but the latter, at least, is not 
known to have specialized to any extent in the 
department of scientific sociology. It is proba- 
bly not too much to say that both Mr. Harrison 
and Miss Scudder have written from the stand- 
point of literature rather than that of sociology. 
One may well question the literal accuracy of 
Mr. Harrison's statement that our literature " is 
become but an instrument in the vast field of 

^Studies in Victorian Literature, p. 13. 
*P. 26. 



8 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

sociology." That is certainly putting too strong- 
ly the truth which every student of literature 
must recognize. That the interests of man as 
man, and that the interests of society, are finding 
literary expression as never before is undoubt- 
edly true, though it would be impossible to deny 
that social interests of some kind have been rep- 
resented in the literature of every period. The 
difference is one of degree rather than of kind. 
The attitude toward what we call social ques- 
tions in the literature of any period is in general 
a reflection of the time in which the book was 
written. Some writers of fiction and of verse 
represent the advance guard, and some the 
stragglers, in the army of progress; but in gen- 
eral they hold the mirror up to their own time. 
The materialization in literature of the mirrored 
image is of great significance to the student of 
society, for there he can find concretely portrayed 
the men and the manners, the conditions and the 
conflicts, the thoughts, feelings, and ideals, which 
write social history. Even before the days of 
Pope and Swift and Richardson and Fielding, 
social history was being thus written, and since 
their time the remarkable development of the 
novel and other forms of literary expression has 
given greatly increased opportunities for the 
faithful representation of social facts and forces. 
It would not be safe to rely zvholly upon poets 



LITERATURE AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 9 

and novelists for our knowledge of the social 
conditions of any period. The view of an epoch 
acquired entirely from this source would be as 
one-sided and inadequate as a view obtained from 
the study of history alone. History and litera- 
ture may be, and should be, correctives of each 
other. In fact, if certain modern critics are 
right, very few histories have ever been written. 
Most books called by this name have been merely 
records of the accessions and dethronements of 
rulers, and statements of the dates of great bat- 
tles, of the numbers killed and wounded on each 
side, and of the final result in victory and defeat 
for one side and the other. Because of the skil- 
ful manipulation of the figures by historians of 
different parties or nationalities, we are some- 
times left sadly in the dark as to what the real 
facts were. Figures that " cannot lie " are often 
used by lying men, and the result is, to say the 
least, bewildering. But, as Mr. John Graham 
Brooks, among others, has pointed out, the great 
and all-important periods of peace and prosperity 
and progress have too often found no historian 
at all. Battles, which are mere ripples upon the 
surface, have been described over and over again 
with scrupulous care, while the great surging 
tides of thought and desire that cause the surface 
movements of the waters, and carry the ripples 
upon their bosom, have too often been utterly 



10 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

ignored. When history shall have been restud- 
ied and rewritten, both literature and sociology- 
will have, in history so written, a storehouse of 
material which will be invaluable for their re- 
spective uses. Whether this new history shall 
be written by men who call themselves historians, 
or by men who call themselves sociologists, is of 
comparatively little importance. We want the 
results; let who will do the work. 

Let us frankly recognize, then, that literature 
is not the only source of knowledge of society, 
though it is an important one. Let us emphat- 
ically assert that the opinions formed as a result 
of the study of this material need to be corrected 
by facts gained from philosophy and history, and 
many other departments of knowledge. It yet 
remains true that literature is one of the impor- 
tant documents to be studied by the person who 
wishes to know the social conditions or develop- 
ments of any period. In some cases it furnishes 
perhaps the best means of knowing thoroughly 
the life and thought of an epoch. If we ask the 
reason of this, we find the answer, first, in the 
character of literature itself; secondly, in the 
work which literature actually accomplishes ; and, 
thirdly, in the methods by which literature 
achieves its results. Of these the second is by 
far the most important. The analysis and dis- 
cussion of this work which literature accomplishes 



LITERATURE AND SOCIAL SCIENCE ii 

in the portrayal of social life will occupy the 
larger part of this study. 



First as to the character of literature. Really 
effective art does not obviously strive after ef- 
fect. The actor w^ho plays to the pit may win 
bowlings of applause, but he is not contributing 
to the exaltation of his art or the permanency of 
his own reputation. The painter who works for 
the medal and colors his canvas to please the 
whim of some influential member of the com- 
mittee may gain the coveted bronze, but he sac- 
rifices his artist instincts and ideals. What does 
it profit an artist to gain all the trinkets that 
were ever stamped into hideousness, if he loses 
the seer's vision and the artist's power to sug- 
gest and portray? The one who poses or who 
lowers, for any cause whatsoever, what to him 
is the very highest standard of effort, by that 
act proves his lack of appreciation of what is 
highest and most enduring in his art. The real 
alone is permanent. As the perfect comes the 
partial is done away, and to leave any work 
less perfect than it is possible to make it is to 
render it to that degree transient and insuffi- 
cient. 

The first demand that sociology makes upon 
literature is that it shall be true to the highest 



12 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

artistic standards. We have said that if litera- 
ture were to become, as Frederic Harrison de- 
clares it has become, " but an instrument in the 
vast field of sociology," the result would be as 
disastrous to sociology as to literature. Litera- 
ture is valuable to the student of society because 
of its unconsciousness, its spontaneity. It speaks 
to us while off its guard. Here as everywhere 
the truth is the ultimate standard by which a 
work of art must be judged. The writer does 
not make a conscious effort to portray truth in 
the abstract, nor does he hold himself rigidly to 
the recital of particular facts or occurrences ; but 
there are certain great principles to which he 
yields obedience, consciously or unconsciously, if 
his work is really successful. It must be " true 
to life," as the hackneyed phrase puts it — true 
to the laws of nature, thought, imagination, emo- 
tion. If, in his endeavor to advocate a theory, 
he disregards these laws, his work loses wholly 
or in part its artistic quality. The laws may 
not be clearly defined. There may be a difference 
of opinion as to the validity of any one of them, 
but there remains a residuum that is real, though 
ill defined. To these laws the true artist is obe- 
dient by instinct as often as by conscious effort. 
The portrayal of life in harmony with these great 
principles is the task which is given him by the 



LITERATURE AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 13 

ideals of his art, and by his own tastes and 
desires. 

The serviceableness of literature to sociology 
is, we repeat, almost wholly dependent upon the 
faithfulness of literature to the artistic ideal in 
the portrayal of life. Mere description of phys- 
ical conditions and statement of social facts have 
their value, but it is the psychical elements for 
which the sociologist looks most eagerly and 
which he studies with greatest care. He wishes 
to know of what people have been thinking ; what 
ideals they have cherished for the home and for 
the government ; how they have regarded woman ; 
what attitude they have taken toward those of 
different rank and social station ; what desires 
have exercised a controlling influence in the lives 
of men and women ; how the emotional life has 
expressed itself — all these and a hundred other 
things of kindred nature are of very great im- 
portance to the student of human associations. 
He insists that literature shall not pose. When 
men are not talking for effect, they say what they 
mean, and such talk indicates the psychical life 
of the speakers. That is to say, sincerity and 
simplicity are as essential in art as in religion 
and everywhere else in life. When a man says 
within himself, " Go to now, I will be pious to- 
day," he usually makes of himself either a hypo- 
crite or a fool. He seeks to cover himself with 



14 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

a mantle which has no vital connection with his 
real self, or he wheedles himself into the belief 
that he can actually be one man one day in the 
week and an entirely different man the other 
six days. Corresponding hypocrisy and folly in 
the writer of literature make his work of no value 
to the sociologist. Sunday piety in literature is 
valueless in any state of the market. Sociology 
asks, and has a right to ask, that novel and poem 
be true to their own highest ideals, obey the laws 
of their art, and portray the inner and the outer 
life as these are in reality or in potentiality. 

The demand that literature be true to the very 
highest artistic ideal, that it never lend itself to 
the mere propaganda of any doctrine or theory 
social or otherwise, does not, on the other hand, 
imply that novelists and poets should keep them- 
selves aloof from the conditions which are the 
subject of social inquiry, and the forces which 
are producing great social movements. Perhaps 
writers could not do this if they tried. It cer- 
tainly would not be desirable if they could. Most 
books are written primarily for their own age 
rather than for all ages. They ought to reflect 
their own time as well as all times. This is not 
in any sense a limitation upon their possibilities. 
but a means of greater efficiency and power. 
Ruskin has taught us, with no doubtful emphasis, 
that truth and sincerity are primary requisites 



LITERATURE AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 15 

of all noble art, and surely the present of the artist 
is not without its truth to be expressed. To 
ignore or reject it is to lose an element of great 
power and value. The writer of literature is 
under obligation, not to sociology, but to his art, 
to enter into the intellectual and emotional strug- 
gle of his time and to give to these the most per- 
fect artistic expression of which he is capable. 

II 

The value of literature to the student of so- 
ciety is largely explained by the work which lit- 
erature actually accomplishes. If, now, we ask. 
What does literature do which gives it this value 
as a means of social expression? we get a three- 
fold answer. First, it studies the past with most 
scrupulous care, and gives, or seeks to give, a 
truthful portrayal of the life of that past time, 
often showing facts and tendencies which persist 
in the present. To do this effectively, the writer 
must know something more than the battles 
fought and the acts of parliament. He must 
study the conditions existing at the time of the 
great events which many so-called historians 
merely state and date. He must know the hills 
and valleys, the meadows and rivers, the farms 
and the roads, the barns and the houses, the 
methods of life, the men and the women in their 
inner and their outer lives, their loves and their 



i6 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

hates, their religion and their crimes, their cus- 
toms and their conventions, their mental strength 
and weakness, their emotions, passions, supersti- 
tions, morality, and everything else that con- 
cerns the physical or the psychical life of the 
people among whom the writer, in imagination, 
lives and moves and has his being. There is 
no one who is obliged to study a past epoch more 
carefully, more in detail, or more comprehensively 
than the writer of literature. He has to go to 
many sources for his material, and, when gained, 
the various elements must be fused into unity by 
the power of imagination and made to breathe 
again the breath of life. When we remember 
the many important epochs of the past which 
have been thus recovered to us by novelists and 
poets, we begin to appreciate the greatness of 
our indebtedness to these benefactors of the race. 
Then, when we think of that subtle, indefinable 
something which we call the " spirit of the time," 
the presence of which in prose or verse does so 
much to make, and the absence of which does 
so much to unmake, literature, we are still fur- 
ther impressed with the difficulty and the delicacy 
of the task which the literary artist has to per- 
form. Unless this work is well done, it is of as 
little value to the sociologist as to the general 
reader. 

One of the results of the study of the past is 



LITERATURE AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 17 

the discovery of certain principles of progress 
which are of permanent value. Sometimes these 
results are negative, but chemistry and biology 
and other sciences have taught us that some nega- 
tive results may be of as great practical value as 
some which are termed positive. Ignorance of 
these negative results is the explanation of the 
repetition of many profitless experiments in char- 
ity, legislation, and industry under conditions 
similar to those in which they were formerly tried 
without success. The waste of time, effort, and 
money from this ignorance is enormous and in- 
excusable. While it is not one of the chief 
functions of literature to give information con- 
cerning the fruitless attempts of the past to meet 
social needs which, so far as we know, are per- 
manent, as a matter of fact the novels of the 
latter half of the eighteenth century do record 
facts concerning prison reform, education, church 
life, the relations of classes, etc., a knowledge of 
which would be most helpful to the student of 
society today. These facts are recorded, not as 
items in a dry chronicle, but as expressions of 
the life of the time, and are given in their nat- 
ural social and psychical relations. They are 
seen to be effects of which the causes are the 
conditions, sympathies, desires, ideas, of the peo- 
ple. They are not unrelated happenings. 

Some positive principles are, however, almost 



i8 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

certain to emerge from various efforts directed 
toward the solution of a vexed problem. Nega- 
tive results — failures, so called — to the critical 
student are indices pointing to the principles 
which must be embodied in action, if the desired 
results are to be obtained. Methods are not given 
in detail, and no patent devices are warranted to 
produce infallible and miraculous results. Usu- 
ally failures and partial successes are the neces- 
sary first steps to more complete and perfect tri- 
umph obtained after the lessons of failure, par- 
tial or complete, have been learned. Even then 
the triumph is not so perfect as our theories, and 
a priori arguments would indicate that it should 
be; for while experiments have been tried, con- 
ditions have been changing, and they compel new 
adjustments and adaptations. The new wine of 
principle cannot be put into old bottles of method 
without disastrous results to both. 

The study of the past shows also certain tend- 
encies which were not pronounced enough to 
be expressed in great events or in legislation, 
but which nevertheless w^ere real and important. 
This drift is clearly revealed, whether the litera- 
ture be the embodiment of the present through a 
spontaneous and unconscious expression of its 
ideals, or the rehabilitation of the past through 
the historic imagination. It requires no very 
close or accurate knowledge of our time to under- 



LITERATURE AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 19 

stand that there is today a socialistic tendency, 
meaning by that a tendency to the acceptance of 
the theory that the products of labor should be 
more equally distributed through the public col- 
lective ownership of land and capital, and the 
public collective management of land and capital.^ 
Even Spencer believed this and trembled. Yet 
we are confident that this is not, after all, a sud- 
den growth. The present conditions are per- 
fectly natural in the sense that they have come 
about in strictest accordance with law. But to 
go back a few decades and discover the acorn 
out of which this mighty oak has grown, to find 
the influences, silent and unseen, which watered 
and nourished it — this is quite a different mat- 
ter. This is what literature does for us, not per- 
haps consciously, but none the less really. In 
the conversation of peasant and priest and lord ; 
in the attitude assumed by representatives of dif- 
ferent classes toward each other; in the aspira- 
tions expressed by the poets of the people ; in the 
vague longings and unsatisfied desires ; in the 
questionings of what men call " providence ; " in 
the ideas of right, the appeals to justice — in all 
these are the prophecies of changed conditions, 
and the future dominance of different theories of 
life and property. These sources of change and 
progress are studied, understood, and expressed 
* Standard Dictionary, " Socialism." 



20 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

by the writer of literature as, perhaps, by no one 
else, though he may be as ignorant as others of 
their real significance for the future. But, 
standing actually or in imagination in the midst 
of the age of which he writes, and being keenly 
sensitive to the subtle but effective influences of 
thought and emotion, he feels as well as knows 
and writes, so that his words have life as well as 
information. 

The value of this method of presentation of 
truth, as contrasted with that employed by the 
historical or scientific chronicler of fact, is ap- 
preciated by Mr. Frederic Harrison, who pro- 
tests against " the flat, ungainly, nerveless style 
of mere scientific research." He continues : 

What lumps of raw fact are flung at our heads ! 
What interminable gritty collops of learning have we 
to munch ! .... It would seem as if the charge which 
some of our historians are most anxious to avoid is the 
charge of being "readable," and of keeping to them- 
selves any fact they know They [the scientists] 

are accustomed to lecture to students in the laboratory 
in their shirt sleeves, with their hands in their pockets ; 
and they believe that immortality may be achieved if 
they can pile up enough facts and manufacture an ade- 
quate number of monographs.* 

There is reason for insisting that literature 
possesses real scientific value for the student of 

' Victorian Age, p. 20. 



LITERATURE AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 21 

society simply because it has interest and vitality, 
and because its ideas are well expressed. It 
makes revelations of the silent influences and 
tendencies that increase in power until they find 
expression in laws, events, and institutions. 
These revelations are not less true because they 
are made with purity of diction and with genuine 
human interest. 

It follows, as an inevitable corollary of the 
above, that literature performs a social service 
of very great value in calling attention to crying 
wrongs that ought to be righted and abuses that 
ought to be corrected. In any particular case 
it is almost impossible to tell who first comes to 
a realization of the injustice involved in any 
social condition or custom, or who first gives ex- 
pression to the sense of wrong which is often 
more felt than reasoned. The mere matter of 
priority is of little practical importance. It is 
important, however, to recognize that literature 
is one of the most effective means of calling at- 
tention to social evils and bringing about a better 
state of things. It performs this beneficent serv- 
ice in various ways, but especially by compelling 
recognition of unpleasant and hidden facts, stim- 
ulating investigation, creating public opinion, 
and arousing public conscience. It is often af- 
firmed today that this work is done by the pulpit 
and the newspaper. There can be no reasona- 



22 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

ble doubt that there is much to be said for this 
claim ; but this is not saying that literature is not 
an efficient agent operating in the same field. 
The statement gives us no information as to the 
indebtedness of the pulpit and newspaper to lit- 
erature for information concerning conditions 
and for stimulus to effort. Because this indebt- 
edness is often indirect rather than direct, it does 
not cease to be real. 

Literature is practically serviceable in the first 
stages of a reform rather than in a later, and 
therefore often fails to receive its due meed of 
praise. After attention has been called to a so- 
cial evil, and people have been made to feel the 
wrong, the work of formulating and enforcing 
laws is done by others. Those who see only 
the visible results in legislation and social action 
forget the steps that had to be taken before the 
first act could be introduced into the legislative 
body with any hope of success. The fact that 
the successful writer of fiction and of verse is 
more sensitive to the changing conditions, 
thoughts, and emotions of men than others, 
makes him a pioneer in the work of social trans- 
formations. He feels sooner than others the de- 
sires, ambitions, and aspirations which struggle 
for expression, and which are the sure prelude 
of social changes corresponding to this psychical 
condition. Certain classes in society have often 



LITERATURE AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 23 

waited long for a poet to sing their songs; but 
this is not strange, for Hterature itself is an ex- 
pression of social thought and feeling, and par- 
takes of the character of its makers and its read- 
ers. For many years the reading of books was 
the luxury of the few rather than the necessity of 
the many ; but even then society as a whole was 
influenced by literature, and not merely a small 
section of it, though the lower classes were af- 
fected only indirectly through the upper classes. 
Through whatever medium that influence may 
formerly have passed it is certain that for at 
least a century and a half literature has had an 
appreciable effect upon social life and action. 

It is desirable to emphasize, even at the risk 
of repetition, the important fact that literature, 
though it may present only the life of a past 
epoch, is a power in the development of society, 
because it appeals to the emotional as well as to 
the intellectual. A cold and vulgar rationalism 
affects to despise emotion as an incentive to ac- 
tion, and maintains that in a developed society 
reason is everywhere and always dominant. 
Whether that type of society would represent a 
progress forward or backward, we may leave to 
others to discuss. As a matter of fact, in the 
individual living in the society of today feeling 
is fundamental. Perhaps it is not true, as Bea- 
consfield declared, that the world is ruled by 



24 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

sentiment, but there is so much of truth in it that 
no one can afiford to disregard it who is con- 
structing a philosophy of Hfe that is to be of any 
practical worth. It is not enough for people to 
know of an injustice which they have the power 
to rectify. They must feci it before they will 
leave their accustomed routine to demand, with 
an emphasis that means anything, that that in- 
justice be done away. That the demand must 
be fortified by fact and approved by reason no 
one would deny; but emotion is the spark that 
sets reason on fire and makes it efficient in the 
destruction of evil. There must be " noble 
ground for noble emotions ; " but neither the 
" noble ground " nor the " noble emotion " can 
be spared, if efficient action is to be secured. 
There are not a few who must be made to feel 
keenly before they will think deeply. To neg- 
lect either one of these two great factors in social 
progress would be to put a part for the whole. 

Secondly, literature does much to bring the 
society of its own day to self-consciousness. 
Nearly all that has been said of the results of 
the study of the past by writers of literature ap- 
plies with equal force to the study of the present. 
Poets and novelists observe carefully the social 
phenomena of their own day ; separate the tran- 
sient from the permanent; give beautiful and 
forceful expression to principles of lastmg value; 



LITERATURE AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 25 

show the tendencies of thought and action, the 
social significance of customs and institutions; 
reveal wrongs and abuses ; voice the otherwise 
unspoken desires and aspirations of all classes 
from the highest to the socially submerged; and 
appeal to the emotions and intellects of those 
who ought to lead the way to social betterment. 
One of the primary requisites for the writer is 
an imagination which will enable him to place 
himself in the midst of situations which he has 
conceived, not merely as a cool and calculating 
observer, but as an active and sympathetic par- 
ticipant. He must have the ability to enter into 
the characters he portrays, the scenes he pic- 
tures, the conditions he describes. Thus to him 
even the past becomes present, because for the 
time being his world is the thought-world. In 
imagination he sees his visions and dreams his 
dreams. He thinks the thoughts of those who 
lived in a past time, feels what they felt, endures 
their wrongs, is inspired by their hopes and de- 
pressed by their woes. Such an one writes of the 
past with the vividness and sympathy and power 
of the present, because to him the past is the pres- 
ent, and he writes of what he feels and knows. 

If it be said that this imaginative quality de- 
tracts from the value of literature for the student 
of society, we should remember that the writer 
must first study in most careful detail the period 



26 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

of which he writes before he can safely venture to 
put pen to paper. He cannot neglect a single 
available source of information concerning the 
period in question without danger of injury to 
the artistic product. He must be the close and 
critical student before he can be the portrayer of 
life. M. Gevaert declares that creation in art 
is memory modified by personality. If the artist 
were not first a discoverer, he would have noth- 
ing to remember and vivify by the power of his 
personality. His merit is that he gives reality 
and life to that which before was vague, unreal, 
and dead. No one can understand the past who 
does not possess and use imagination. 

But imagination is almost as essential to the 
understanding and representation of the present 
as of the past. To enter into the lives of others 
is a part of the task of the one who writes of 
his own day. He must thoroughly understand 
the external conditions as well as the thoughts, 
feelings, and desires of those for whom he at- 
tempts to speak. He can gain this result only 
by imagination. To look upon houses and fields 
and persons and classes no more gives an under- 
standing of the inner lives of the people than 
the sight of the crust of Vesuvius tells of the 
terrific fires that are raging in its heart. To be 
sure, it is not a fool's task to observe carefully 
and describe accurately the external conditions 



LITERATURE AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 27 

of life. But only the " seer " can discern, and 
only the genuine artist can portray, the " thoughts 
which do often lie too deep for tears," and which 
are, after all, the determining factors in a social 
condition. Sight is not so rare as insight. 

This sympathetic insight into the heart of an 
age, a people, a class, is an indispensable pre- 
requisite to the one who would aid in the task 
of bringing an epoch to self-consciousness. No 
one can interpret anything of which he has not a 
sympathetic understanding. Even if this were 
possible, people would be very slow to accept an 
interpretation of their inner life that was offered 
by a cynic or an unsympathetic critic. 

Interpretation, if it be truthful involves the 
revelation of certain facts and conditions which 
reflect discredit upon the people. The knowledge 
of these things is always unwelcome. The truth- 
fulness of the revelation is usually at first em- 
phatically denied, and the denial is frequently 
perfectly sincere. The people were ignorant of 
certain conditions which actually existed, and 
so were unconscious of any criminal negligence 
on their own part in permitting the continuance 
of evils which they might have investigated and 
exterminated. They were unaware that their 
own ways of thinking and feeling about certain 
social evils were the result of traditions and con- 
ventions which were sanctioned by usage rather 



28 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

than by justice and right. They failed to see 
that these thoughts and feeHngs are a psychical 
inheritance from the past, are out of harmony 
with the latest and best developments of their 
own age, and are a direct contradiction to much 
that is highest and best in their own standards 
of thought and life. 

The possibility of the dwelling together of 
these contradictions in the same mind without any 
seeming recognition that they are contradictions, 
is one of the curious facts of psychology. There 
are more than isolated examples of men who 
under the roof of the church repeat the Golden 
Rule with pious fervor, and in the market do 
unto others exactly what they do not wish others 
to do unto them. Many such men do not see 
any real inconsistency between the repetition of 
the formula and their practices in business. 
When such a man sees in David Hariim the time- 
honored adage transposed to read, " Do unto the 
other feller the way he'd like to do unto you, 
and do it fust," he is startled into the suspicion 
that some one has been prying into his private 
affairs. So common is this harmonious cohabita- 
tion of contradictions in the same mind that when 
a man is found, like Jonathan Edwards, who is 
actually consistent, we are shocked. Many theo- 
logians of his time declared that God is just and 
good, -and yet were horrified that so large a por- 



LITERATURE AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 29 

tion of the race were foreordained to eternal 
damnation by this same good God. Edwards 
saw that whatever a good God decrees must be 
good, and, as Professor W. L. Phelps says, not 
only swallowed the whole thing, but actually de- 
clared it tasted good. Edwards rejoiced in the 
damnation of the wicked because it was the work 
of a good God, and must therefore in itself be 
good. 

Edwards was a writer of literature as well as 
a powerful preacher, and his, to us, musty and 
sulphurous theology helped to bring the people 
of his day to self-consciousness. When thoughts 
and beliefs, emotions and aspirations, are objec- 
tified in literature, men are compelled to see the 
relations of part to part as never before, to har- 
monize contradictions, and to judge of particular 
beliefs and feelings as right or wrong, injurious 
or helpful, to individuals and to groups. When 
the inner life of a people is visualized in literature, 
the program followed out is frequently something 
like this : first an indignant and wholesale denial 
of the truth of the representation; then a sus- 
picion on the part of the more enlightened that 
there may be a grain of truth in all the chaff of 
exaggeration and misrepresentation ; then a care- 
ful investigation to ascertain how much is true 
and how much false; then the diffusion of the 
knowledge of facts gained by investigation ; then 



30 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

the adoption of reforms to remedy the evils dis- 
covered. 

Besides bringing those who had become dull 
and torpid, by reason of their long exclusion 
from opportunities of self-development, to a con- 
sciousness of the fact that they are enduring 
oppression which neither individuals nor systems 
have any right to put upon them ; besides arous- 
ing people in general to a sympathetic apprecia- 
tion of the higher ambitions and possibilities of 
those who are the victims of injustice sanctioned 
only by ignorance, foolish traditions, and unwar- 
ranted customs ; besides all this, literature acts as 
a sort of safety-valve for the feelings of indigna- 
tion and wrath, the sense of injustice and wrong, 
which, if they did not find this outlet, might 
manifest themselves in ways more violent and 
dangerous. To be sure, this is a two-edged 
sword and may cut in either direction. Litera- 
ture may aid in stirring up rebellion and revolu- 
tion as well as in quelling them. To determine 
the exact influence of literature in any particular 
case, many factors would have to be taken into 
account, which cannot be specially considered 
here, such as : the form and spirit of the literary 
product; the direct accessibility of the literature 
to those who feel that they are suffering the 
wrong which ought to be redressed ; the tempera- 
ment, intelligence, self-restraint, and social or- 



LITERATURE AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 31 

ganization of the wronged; the attitude assumed 
by those who, rightly or wrongly, are supposed to 
be responsible for the oppression, and who would 
profit socially or financially by its continuance. 

All these factors have an important bearing 
upon the subject ; but the point to which we wish 
to give special emphasis here is the hope and 
optimism inspired in those who feel that they 
have suffered injury at the hands of society or 
of another class. This hopefulness arises from 
a consciousness that others know of the wrong 
endured and feel it as a wrong. There is ground 
then for the belief that redress is on the way. 
To sufifer alone without the sympathy of others, 
from causes for which the sufferer is not re- 
sponsible, is a dangerous thing for an individual 
or a class. When once a man feels that every 
man's hand is against him, it is usually only a 
matter of time when his hand will be against 
every man. 

This perhaps is even more true of a group 
than of an individual, because of that mysterious 
influence which impels the crowd to do what 
would not be done by individuals acting sepa- 
rately. Feeling is inflamed and angrily ex- 
pressed in a crowd. The individual takes a 
sober second thought and more rational meas- 
ures to secure the result which he desires. To 
give to those who are suffering from real or im- 



32 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

agined oppression assurance of sympathy and 
brotherhood, to inspire them with the hope that 
here in this present world, and with as little de- 
lay as possible, their wrongs will be redressed 
and their rights to the best things of life will 
be fully recognized, this is to transform the mob 
into the debating society which has for its ob- 
ject to discover social truth, or into the peaceable 
union working for the ends of justice by legal 
and rational means. This destroys the material 
out of which mobs and riots and revolutions are 
made. To secure this end literature, though 
not the sole, is a very efficient agent. 

Thirdly, literature has a distinct value as an 
aid to social progress because of its embodiment 
of the highest individual and social ideals. The 
power of an ideal over an individual or a race 
is unmeasured and unmeasurable. Ideals grow 
and change with the change and growth of those 
by whom they are formed and cherished. The 
nation whose ideal has been industrial may come 
to possess the ideal of conquest and empire, and 
there is not a village or hamlet within her bor- 
ders that will not feel the influence of the 
change. James Lane Allen has a passage upon 
the two dififerent kinds of ideals which is worth 
quoting here. He says : 

Ideals are of two kinds. There are those that corre- 
spond to our highest sense of perfection. . . . They are 



LITERATURE AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 33 

not useless because unattainable What are they 

like — ideals such as these ? They are like lighthouses. 
But lighthouses are not made to live in ; neither can we 
live in such ideals. I suppose they are meant to shine 
on us from afar, when the sea of our life is dark and 
stormy, perhaps to remind us of a haven of hope, as we 

drift or sink in shipwreck But there are ideals 

of another sort As we advance into life, out of 

larger experience of the world and of ourselves are 
unfolded the ideals of what will be possible to us if we 
make the best use of the world and of ourselves, taken 
as we are. Let these be as high as they may, they will 
always be lower than those others which are perhaps 

veiled intimations of our immortality It is these 

that are to burn for us, not like lighthouses in the dis- 
tance, but like candles in our hands By degrees 

the comforting light of what you may actually do and 
be in an imperfect world will shine close to you and 
all around you, more and more. It is this that will lead 
you, never to perfection, but always toward it.° 

Both of these kinds of ideals are given in lit- 
erature, because both are efficient in life. It 
would be useless to speculate as to which is the 
more powerful in influencing thought and action, 
for both are necessary. Candles are of greatest 
service in revealing the nearest dangers, but the 
lighthouse sends out the beams which promise 
infinite progress and inspire in the heart of the 
mariner an infinite hope. Ideals are, after all, 
the product of the study of the past and present, 

' The Choir Invisible, pp. 312-14. 



34 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

modified by the dominant intentions and the sub- 
limest visions of a personality. It is because of 
this change in ideals, corresponding to the change 
in idealists, that poetry and story-telling are a 
perpetual necessity. Thus it is that every age 
must have its own novelists and poets to express 
its vision of the candle and of the lighthouse. 
This seems to us a great lack of economy. We 
see no reason, in the nature of things, why 
Homer might not have pictured the ideals of per- 
fection once for all, and left the poets of the 
subsequent ages free to sing of other themes. 
But nature, everywhere wasteful, is as spend- 
thrift of poets as of seeds and flowers. Every 
age has its own candle, showing the obstacles 
and the beauties which are nearest. These are 
always different from those which surrounded 
any preceding period. It has also its own pencil 
of lighthouse rays which are a little brighter and 
more luminous than any that reached a former 
age. " Every fall of the race is a fall upward," 
and brings it a little nearer the great source of 
its light. Even the pessimist, who believes that 
all progress is negative, and therefore not prog- 
ress at all, but retrogression, would still admit 
that every epoch must have its own literature, if 
its own intellectual, emotional, and social life 
is to find adequate expression. The individ- 
uality of every period is shown in its ideals more. 



LITERATURE AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 35 

perhaps, than in anything else, and nowhere are 
those ideals more fully and definitely expressed 
than in literature. 

It is doubtless a truism that ideals are the 
dominant, transforming power in the individual 
and in society. The recognition of the fact is, 
however, more theoretical than practical. If 
this were the place to call attention to the terrible 
need of the practical application of some of the 
things we claim to know so well, we might re- 
mind ourselves that often the essential difference 
between the criminal and the law-abiding citizen 
is a difference in ideals. The fifteen-year-old 
boy in the Chicago slums aspires to be a " tough " 
because the men he sees and knows, and those of 
whom he reads in his " three-for-a-nickel " li- 
brary, have created in him an ideal of manhood 
to which the criminal alone corresponds. That 
we take little practical recognition of this, which 
we are almost ready to call a truism, is evi- 
denced by the fact that we still allow, and by our 
negligence encourage, the formation of these 
ideals by permitting the sale of journalistic 
trash, and compelling the young offender to as- 
sociate with desperate and hardened criminals in 
jails and penitentiaries. It is not exaggeration 
to say that he is a real benefactor to the world 
who hammers in a few such things that every- 
body knows. Among these few things are the 



36 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

Ten Commandments, the " ethical chestnuts " of 
Dr. Parkhurst. " To say a thing," says Goethe, 
" that everybody else has said before, as quietly 
as if nobody had ever said it, that is originality. 
The great merit of the old painters was that they 
did not try to be original." Goethe's originality 
is in itself an ideal of genuine social value. 

But not only does literature give expression to 
the individual and social ideals of the time. It 
is also one of the forces which help to create the 
dominant ideals of society. Too much stress 
must not be laid upon this part of the subject. 
Nothing must obscure the truth that always the 
primary purpose of literature is representation, 
rather than creation, of life and ideals. The 
poets especially give to us the highest ideals of 
their day, and to the average man these seem 
to be the creation of the poet, when in reality 
they are only faithful pictures of the actual vis- 
ions of the purest and noblest souls. Everyone 
recognizes that a man sees only what he is pre- 
pared to see, and if the poets see the highest 
ideals in man and in society, and give to these a 
beautiful expression, they are doing much to 
make the ideals themselves a transforming power 
in the social world. By such a revelation they 
arouse in the minds of men a desire to attain the 
ideals portrayed, and this is a necessary first step 
to the actual attainment. To adapt the definition 



LITERATURE AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 37 

of Gevaert to our purpose, we may say that the 
poetic creation of ideals is really representation 
modified by the personality of the poet. 

It is to be expected that the soul that is clear- 
visioned enough to see these highest ideals for 
the individual and the race, will also be peculiarly 
sensitive to all the tendencies and influences 
which aid in their attainment or which tend to 
their obscuration. We have already said suf- 
ficient upon the subject of the relation of litera- 
ture to these influences and tendencies in speak- 
ing of the literary study of the past and the 
present. The only point to which special at- 
tention need here be called is the relation of these 
tendencies and influences to the actual attainment 
of the ideals portrayed. This is really only a 
specific application of the principles before stated. 
The ideals form the standard by which the in- 
fluences and tendencies are judged. Whatever 
brings the individual and the race nearer the 
cherished ideals is approved ; whatever retards 
the progress in this direction is condemned. The 
work is therefore, in this aspect of it, partly de- 
structive and partly constructive. The construc- 
tive work is the more positive and aggressive. 
The destructive work is as often accomplished by 
neglect, scorn, or refusal to approve, as by posi- 
tive condemnation. 

No one who has thought upon the subject can 



38 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

have failed to have noticed the chasm between 
the ideals presented by literature and the actual 
conditions at any particular time. We are com- 
pelled to ask: How can this chasm be bridged? 
To this question literature gives no satisfactory 
answer. That the chasm is deep and wide there 
can be no doubt, but in our difficulty we must go 
to someone other than the poet or novelist for 
help. Here we find one of the undoubted limi- 
tations of the usefulness of literature to the prac- 
tical worker for the betterment of society. While 
the crowd is wallowing in the mire, the poet cries : 
" I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains." 
That is a cry of confidence and hope and cheer. 
It gives strength and courage for effort, but, un- 
fortunately, it does not lift the wallowing herd 
to the summit upon which the poet has fixed his 
gaze. It may be that it is for this reason that 
literature has been almost wholly disregarded as 
an agency for social service. Because it has not 
constructed a complete social philosophy, offered 
immediate solutions for all the vexed problems of 
society, and constructed programs warranted to 
usher in a millennium on schedule time; because 
it has not done these things, it has been ignored, 
almost as if it had done nothing of social im- 
portance. While programs are the order of the 
day, it is certainly true that literature has no 
special claim for conspicuous notice. But, on 



LITERATURE AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 39 

the other hand, it is as certainly true that Htera- 
ture has rendered a much more efficient and valu- 
able service, as we have tried to show. To be 
sure, some makers of literature have tried their 
hands at making programs, but never with emi- 
nent success, and usually with conspicuous failure. 
Their failures have been no worse, perhaps, than 
those of many others who have made similar at- 
tempts; but this is cold comfort. The simple 
fact is that poets and novelists do not know how 
to construct a practical social program, and the 
wisest of them have understood this, and, fol- 
lowing the advice of Carlyle, have minded their 
own business. Those who have been less wise 
have made the attempt, and have demonstrated 
by their failures their inability to do successfully 
what they have so boldly attempted. 

But if Arnold was right when he wrote that 
our urgent need now is " to lay in a stock of light 
for our difficulties; " ^ if Miss Scudder is right in 
saying that " the race will never abandon an ideal 
once realized, but will raise all to its level," '^ then 
literature must be recognized as one of the im- 
portant factors contributing to social progress; 
for it does add to our " stock of light," and it 
does aid in establishing and realizing individual 
and social ideals which the race will never aban- 

• Culture and Anarchy, chap. 2. 
^Social Ideals, p. 273. 



40 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

don until all rise to their level. Miss Scudder 
continues : " First to establish a lofty standard ; 
then, through the action of the state, to realize 
conditions in which the free upward-striving in- 
stinct of men may make that standard universal 
— such is the order of social evolution." ^ It 
is perhaps largely because literature has to do 
with the earlier stages of the process of social 
evolution rather than the later that its greatest 
contributions to individual and race-progress 
have been all but universally ignored. The pub- 
lication of books like Miss Scudder's Social Ideals 
in English Letters and of Kuno Francke's Social 
Forces in German Literature indicates that we 
are about to give a tardy recognition to literature 
as a factor in social evolution. Yet these books 
are more significant for what they prophesy than 
for what they accomplish. 

Ill 

As to the methods employed by literature in 
accomplishing the results enumerated but little 
need be said. As a general characterization of 
literature we may quote the words of the Stand- 
ard Dictionary, omitting the explantory paren- 
theses : 

Literature, in its narrowest and strictest sense, be- 
longs to the sphere of high art, and embodies thought 

*Loc. cit. 



LITERATURE AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 41 

that is power-giving, or inspiring and elevating, rather 
than merely knowledge-giving; catholic, or of interest 
to man as man ; aesthetic in its tone and style ; and 
shaped by the creative imagination, or power of artistic 
construction. 

Having this general explanation in mind, we 
may say that the methods employed by literature 
in rendering this unconscious social service may 
be classified under two general heads : 

1. Simple statements of facts, physical or 
psychical, are rarely ranked as literary products, 
though simplicity is one of the essentials of great 
art. Some essays, however, which are generally 
classed as literature consist almost wholly of 
such declarations. Simple statements of facts 
may be " power-giving " or inspiring, if the facts 
are rightly chosen and skilfully arranged. 

2. The imaginative presentation of condi- 
tions, needs, and ideals is an effective method of 
calling attention to abuses which ought to be 
abolished. Here physical, psychical, and social 
facts become tools for the use of the imagination 
in creative art. The most important means used 
to make this imaginative presentation effective 
are these: (a) By the use of rhythm, literature 
gains an added power over certain minds. The 
degree of susceptibility to impression by rhyth- 
mical forms varies greatly in different persons; 
sometimes also in the same person at different 



42 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

periods of life, (b) By the use of love in its 
romantic forms, literature creates and maintains 
interest in characters, classes, and periods. The 
relation of this to the development of the family 
has peculiar importance to the student of society. 
(c) Satire has been used effectively by poets and 
novelists as a sting for those guilty of allowing 
the continuance of social evils, and as a spur to 
social remedial action, (d) By his appeals to 
compassion and sympathy, the writer of literature 
arouses the emotions, and thus gives needful 
stimulus for the correction of errors and the im- 
provement of conditions. 

If we say, in conclusion, that literature, viewed 
from the standpoint of sociology, can never be 
allowed the watchword " art for art's sake " 
without vigorous protest, we are saying no more 
than many of the best students of literature are 
saying. In fact, that much-vaunted formula, to 
the layman, seems to be either meaningless or 
absolutely false. In a world of human beings 
there is and can be no art that is unrelated to 
man. Man is the artist, and man is the judge of 
that which is created. To be sure, art must be 
sincere and true; but this only means that its 
appeal must be to the higher and not to the lower 
man. Thus, instead of " art for art's sake," we 
have the truer and more meaningful formula 
" art for man's sake." If we understand by the 



LITERATURE AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 43 

term " man " the highest and divinest man, the 
watchword is as good for Hterature as it is for 
sociology; for we have shown that the service 
of literature to sociology is dependent upon the 
maintenance of the highest artistic standards. 
Sociology asks of literature, not a disquisition 
upon the nature and function of the social or- 
ganism, but a faithful, sympathetic, artistic, vital 
portrayal of the physical, intellectual, emotional, 
and moral life of persons, classes, and periods. 

Most of the best work that literature has done 
for society cannot be put into figures, or given 
a definite and accurate statement, because this 
work is fundamental and spiritual. It is only 
the coarser, cruder, less vital, and less important 
facts and forces of life that lend themselves to 
the uses of the ganger and the statistician. The 
scales have not yet been invented by which we 
can measure the social service rendered to the 
world by Dante, in becoming the interpreter of 
the Middle Ages ; in transforming the conception 
of love from a sensual appetite into a spiritual 
and ideal passion ; in becoming the herald of a 
new era of liberty, purity, and service in the 
church. The value to the race of the valiant 
championship of civil and religious liberty by 
John Milton in prose and verse is utterly beyond 
computation. Mrs. Browning's " Cry of the 
Children " was based upon Home's report of the 



44 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

condition of mines and factories, and hastened 
an act of Parliament restricting the employment 
of children of tender years. Of so much we are 
morally certain; but how great was the influence 
of this poem in securing this act of Parliament 
no one can tell, for other forces were also work- 
ing toward the same end. When President Lin- 
coln was introduced to Mrs. H. B. Stowe in 
Washington in 1863, he said: "Is this the 
little woman who caused the war ? " The words 
must not be taken too literally, of course; but 
there is in them a statesman's recognition of the 
influence exerted by one maker of literature, in 
bringing about social changes of the greatest sig- 
nificance. 

If we ask for the difference between the 
social service rendered by poetry and that ren- 
^dered by fiction, we find no complete and satis- 
factory answer. No statement could be made to 
which there would not be so many exceptions as 
to make the result seem almost valueless. It has 
been said that the novel is the most effective 
weapon of satire, and that poetry is the best me- 
dium for the presentation of ideals. As a gen- 
eral characterization, this may be allowed to 
stand, though everyone thinks at once of prose 
that is more poetic than poetry, and of poetry 
more prosaic than prose. Remembering that 
there are idealistic novels and satirical poems, we 



LITERATURE AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 45 

may take the general statement for what it is 
worth. Our concern being especially with 
poetry, it is natural and desirable that particular 
attention be given to those phases of social serv- 
ice for which poetry is conspicuous. If " a noble 
standard of life is the first need of social evolu- 
tion," ^ poetry has had a great opportunity of 
meeting a primary social need by revealing the 
highest possibilities of man as man, and thus 
helping to establish that " noble standard." This 
opportunity has not passed unimproved. 

** Poetry holds at all times the truth of the 
future," ^" and thus heralds the dawn of the ever- 
new day and leads the way. So long a time 
frequently elapses between the enunciation of a 
truth and its universal acceptance ; so many voices 
have to take up the cry of the herald before it 
reaches the utmost bounds of the land; so many 
auxiliary influences are frequently called into 
play to aid in the establishment of a truth that 
has already been fearlessly proclaimed, that often 
the poet, the first discoverer, is shouted down by 
the noisy cries of those who have taken the mes- 
sage from his lips. Often the poet, 

The first discoverer starves — his followers, all 
Flower into fortune." 

' Social Ideals, p. 273. 

^"Ibld., p. 232. 

" Tennyson, " Columbus," p. 527. 



46 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

" The true Sovereign of the world," says Car- 
lyle, " who molds the world, like soft wax, ac- 
cording to his pleasure, is he who lovingly sees 
into the world; the inspired Thinker whom in 
these days we name Poet." ^^ 

"Miscellaneous Essays, Vol. I, p. 152. 



CHAPTER II 

SOCIAL CONDITIONS IN ENGLAND IN THE 
TIME OF TENNYSON 

We are now to study somewhat in detail the 
application of the principles enunciated in the 
preceding chapter to the work of Alfred Ten- 
nyson. The poems of Tennyson would certainly 
not be selected first, if we were to choose vol- 
umes of nineteenth-century poetry in the order 
of their social significance ; and some have gone 
so far as to say that the poems of the great 
laureate have no social importance at all. That 
this latter view is completely mistaken it will not, 
I think, be difficult to show. 

Because Tennyson was supremely the artist of 
his century, and one of the greatest artists of 
any century, the social value of his work as the 
mirror of his age has been ignored or positively 
denied ; but we have seen that the social value 
of a literary product is not opposed to, but, in a 
sense, is dependent upon, its artistic quality. 
Artistic perfection does not of itself give assur- 
ance that any work will be of social service; but 
if a novel or poem which might otherwise possess 

47 



48 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

a social value lacks the artistic quality, its use- 
fulness is thereby destroyed or rendered transient. 
With this view of the artist's place in society, 
Tennyson becomes exceedingly interesting to the 
student of sociology. He did not formulate a 
schedule of social movements ; but we are learn- 
ing that the quest for novel social theories and 
startling programs is more than a weariness to 
the flesh ; for, even when successful, the theories 
and programs discovered are found to be of lit- 
tle practical value. 

Before entering upon a study of the poems 
themselves, however, we need to understand as 
clearly as possible the social world in which Ten- 
nyson began his work. We may fix upon 1830 
as the date of the beginning of his life-labors, 
the year in which he published Poems, CJiicHy 
Lyrical. His only publications which preceded 
this volume were Poems by Tzvo Brothers, by 
Charles and Alfred Tennyson in 1827, and Tim- 
buctoo, a poem which obtained the chancellor's 
medal at the Cambridge commencement in 1829. 
Alfred Tennyson was between fifteen and seven- 
teen years of age when his contributions to the 
volume Poems by Two BrotJicrs were written, 
and nineteen or twenty when the prize poem was 
prepared for his Cambridge audience. These 
verses have little significance for our purpose. 
Indeed, he wrote of himself in 1890: "I sup- 



ENGLAND IN THE TIME OF TENNYSON 49 

pose I was nearer thirty than twenty before I 
was anything of an artist." ^ It is with the 
poetry of Tennyson after he became a master- 
workman that we are especially concerned, and 
the volumes of 1830 and 1832 are not without 
genuine artistic quality. 

What were the social conditions existing in 
England in the nineteenth century, or during that 
part of it in which Tennyson lived? Someone 
has said that the nineteenth century began 
in 1789, and if we accept the statement, we shall 
have over a hundred years to summarize in one 
brief chapter. It is evident that we can only 
glance at the prominent features of a period 
which contains much that is worthy of being 
studied in detail. Professor Charles Zueblin 
gives five social characteristics of the seventeenth 
and eighteenth centuries : ( i ) political reform, 
(2) extension of commerce, (3) industrial revo- 
lution, (4) liberty of the press, and (5) Wes- 
leyan revival. The industrial revolution is the 
central fact in the eighteenth century. It is one 
of those large movements that cannot be said 
to have begun in a specified year, but which may 
be placed roughly at the close of the eighteenth 
century. Important inventions had been made, 
the full significance of which no one at the time 
could have appreciated. The spinning-frame, 

^Memoir, Vol. I, p. 12. 



50 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

the spinning-mule, the power-loom, and the cot- 
ton-gin, called into being in the latter half of the 
eighteenth century were destined to work mar- 
velous changes in the life of the people. The 
motive power of steam had been discovered, and 
early prophesied some of the transformations 
which have since proved of immense economic 
value. 

With the altered conditions brought about by 
these wonderful inventions we are familiar, be- 
cause they have continued down to the present 
time. Every decade brings changes, but the 
later years have only extended and developed the 
methods and the machinery which first made ap- 
plicable the term " industrial revolution." It is 
necessary for us to remember that up to the mid- 
dle of the eighteenth century practically all manu- 
factures were carried on by hand. Factories 
were almost unknown. Few, if any, large 
towns were devoted to any one trade. The 
manufacturer was often the farmer, who em- 
ployed part of his time in the pursuit of agri- 
culture and part in weaving cloth in his own 
house. The cottage of the laborer was almost 
the only factory. The old-fashioned spinning- 
wheel and the hand-loom were the ordinary in- 
struments of production. Steam power was un- 
known, and so little coal was mined as to be of 



ENGLAND IN THE TIME OF TENNYSON 51 

trifling importance in the solution of the problem 
of fuel. 

When Tennyson began his work in 1830, these 
conditions were greatly changed. Steam was 
then being applied to almost every industry, new 
machines had been invented, coal was being 
mined in large quantities, the means of trans- 
portation had been vastly improved. The steam- 
ship had been created, and heralded the advent 
of the railroad train. Population had increased, 
and began to be concentrated in large towns 
given over to manufactures of various sorts. 

The agitation for political changes became 
pronounced in this period, though much of the 
desired legislation was not secured until later. 
The Reform Bill was passed in 1832. Not until 
that year did the new factory workers receive 
their rightful share in the government, and the 
agricultural population obtain a more adequate 
representation. With the passing of that bill 
the power of the land-owning class was severely 
curtailed, and democracy gained a new and im- 
portant victory.^ The Corn Laws were not re- 
pealed until 1846. 

In 181 5 Napoleon received his crushing de- 
feat at Waterloo at the hands of the Duke of 
Wellington. The years of war preceding that 

' See Gibbins, The English People in the Nineteenth 
Century, p. 26. 



52 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

battle had cost the nation millions of pounds. 
The wealth acquired by the development of in- 
dustry and commerce was in one sense quite as 
essential to the victory of England as the prowess 
of her soldiers. When at last peace was de- 
clared and the nation had time to consider the 
condition of its own people, the working classes 
were suffering from high prices of food, low 
wages, and high' taxes. In fact, the whole coun- 
try was groaning under the overwhelming load 
of taxation, while money was so scarce that for 
twenty years preceding 1819 the Bank of Eng- 
land had not gold enough to cash its own notes.^ 

Those who suffered most keenly as a result 
of these conditions were naturally the poor. 
They had no reserve fund upon which to draw. 
They were almost entirely dependent for their 
livelihood upon the product of their daily toil. 
The men who had worked only by hand found 
themselves without employment, because the new 
machines tended by women or children were do- 
ing the work the men had been accustomed to do, 
and were doing it faster and better than they 
could do it. Workmen became dependent upon 
capitalist employers, and a competition before 
unknown became a powerful factor in industry 
and commerce. 

The moral and physical conditions of the fac- 

' Gibbins, op. cit., p. 2. 



ENGLAND IN THE TIME OF TENNYSON 53 

tory workers were often wretched. Persons of 
all ages and both sexes were crowded into large 
factories, with no arrangements for the preserva- 
tion of health, inorality, comfort, or decency. 
Poverty seemed to compel as sad conditions in 
the home as in the factory. In Manchester one- 
tenth of the total population lived in cellars, 
which were often flooded with stagnating filth. 
In these miserable holes entire families lived 
crowded together, sleeping on the damp and 
filthy floors, through which moisture was con- 
tinually oozing up sending out disgusting odors. 
The children from such homes as these and from 
the poorhouses were employed in the factories as 
veritable slaves. To read the record of the cruel, 
inhuman, devilish treatment of these children, of 
their abuse and overwork, makes the blood run 
hot. It was mentioned in Parliament in 181 5 
that children were actually bought and sold by 
employers as if they were slaves; but who 
cared ? ^ 

We cannot wonder that during the years in 
which the changes were taking place pauperism 
greatly increased. The industrial revolution, 
war, agricultural and manufacturing failures and 
losses, forced many of the poorest people out of 
the self-supporting class and into the ranks of 
the dependent. Under the provision of the Corn 

*Ibid., p. 3- 



54 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

Laws, passed in 1815 and re-enacted at later 
dates, foreign corn could not be imported till 
English wheat was almost at famine price. P. 
A, Graham ^ quotes the testimony of a man who 
was obliged to live on raw turnips or boiled net- 
tles, because unable to pay the high price de- 
manded for bread. Even Queen Victoria wrote 
as late as 1847 • " The price of bread is so high 
that we have been obliged to reduce every one 
to a pound a day, and only secondary flour to be 
used in the royal kitchen." If royalty was thus 
stinted, the condition of the poor may perhaps be 
imagined.^ 

Relief of some sort was imperatively de- 
manded. Since 1796 outdoor relief had been 
given to laborers, whether able-bodied or not.' 
The pernicious policy of supplementing wages 
by poor-rates was commonly followed. To this 
folly was added that of giving relief according to 
the number of children in a family, thus encour- 
aging profligacy and improvident marriages. 

By these means pauperism, so far from being 
checked, was actually encouraged. In 181 8 the 
poor-rate had increased to 13 j. 3 cf. per head. 
While the condition of the poor was thus going 
from bad to worse, England's ambition for com- 
mercial supremacy was steadily growing. France 

" The Victorian Era, p. 26. 
* Gibbins, op. cit., p. 36. 



ENGLAND IN THE TIME OF TENNYSON 55 

was in this field a formidable rival, and this fact 
did not tend to increase the friendship of the 
two nations. Napoleon showed that he was de- 
termined to make France the leading country in 
commerce, not only of Europe, but of the world. 
This purpose in the great Corsican was a trum- 
pet-call to Britain to gird herself for battle in 
the markets of the world as well as upon the field 
of war. 

The day of cottage factories was past. Manu- 
facturing industries developed, merchants became 
more enterprising and daring, and consequently 
foreign trade increased in variety and in value. 
The colonies which we now know as the United 
States had been lost, but many others remained, 
including such important sources of trade as 
Canada and India. Yet as late as 1820 the value 
of England's foreign and colonial imports was 
only about thirty-two million pounds sterling, 
and the imports and exports combined were only 
seventy-nine millions; while in the three years 
preceding 1840 the average of imports rose to 
fifty-six millions, and the total imports and ex- 
ports to one hundred and fifteen millions. In the 
twenty years following 1840 the increase in for- 
eign and colonial trade was still more remark- 
able. 

It was not until 1836 that the heavy tax of 
four pence on each newspaper was so reduced as 



56 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

to cease to be prohibitive for a large portion of 
the population. About the same time the duty 
on paper was diminished. This meant much to 
the poor people of England and to all lovers of 
cheap literature. In 1837 Mr. Rowland Hill 
proposed to abolish all existing rates of postage, 
and to substitute therefor a uniform rate of one 
penny, irrespective of distance, with prepayment 
by means of stamps. This suggestion, which at 
first aroused a storm of opposition, was adopted 
by Parliament in 1839. 

The agitation for the removal of the religious 
disabilities grew warm in the early years of the 
century. Catholics were not allowed to sit in 
Parliament or hold any public office. William 
Pitt attempted to change these unfair conditions 
in 1 80 1, but without success. In 18 10 Grattan 
repeated the effort of Pitt, and with the same 
result. Partial success came in 181 7, when, by 
the passage of the Military and Naval Officers* 
Oath Bill, all ranks of the army and navy were 
opened to Catholics and Dissenters. In 1823 
the Catholic Association, a large and influential 
society, was called into being to aid in the work 
of Catholic emancipation. Two years later Par- 
liament passed an act to dissolve the association 
as a dangerous body. In 1828 Daniel O'Con- 
nell, the eloquent advocate of freedom and tolera- 
tion, was elected to Parliament for County Clare, 



ENGLAND IN THE TIME OF TENNYSON 57 

but, being a Roman Catholic, he could not take 
his seat. This precipitated a crisis, and in 1829, 
in spite of fierce opposition, a bill was passed by 
both houses which opened Parliament to Roman 
Catholics. The restrictions upon Protestant Dis- 
senters had been removed the year before, so that 
when Tennyson published his Poem's, Chiefly 
Lyrical very few persons in England were at po- 
litical disadvantage because of their religious 
views. 

Besides the changes already enumerated, there 
were other important events and transformations 
that took place during the life of the poet. Some 
of these are definitely referred to in the poems, 
some are reflected in his verses only in spirit and 
not mentioned by name, while concerning others 
he is absolutely silent. Each method of treating 
great facts and movements has its own signifi- 
cance. " Silence is vocal, if we listen well." 

In the industrial world the changes were per- 
haps most marked and most prophetic of the 
" age that is to be." In 1830 the first co-opera- 
tive farm was founded, followed fourteen years 
later by the organization of the Rochdale Equi- 
table Pioneers. In 1832 genuine trades unions 
were formed. A year afterward factory inspec- 
tors were appointed. In 1842 women and chil- 
dren were prohibited from working in under- 
ground galleries. Five and eight years later 



58 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

Sadler, Oastler, and the Earl of Shaftesbury suc- 
ceeded in securing legislation for the further pro- 
tection of women and children employed in mines 
and factories. In 1862 devices for the safety 
and ventilation of mines were introduced. In 
1870 payment in *' truck " was abolished. In 
1889 the dockers' strike showed to the world the 
great power of united labor. The Chartist in- 
surrection took place as far back as 1839, and 
opened the eyes of many to the possible peril 
arising from the wrath of the oppressed when 
once aroused. The formation of the Electric 
Telegraph Company in 1846, and the rapid ex- 
tension of railways in the fifteen years succeed- 
ing, together with the ever-increasing activity of 
the press, served to unify the people of the realm 
in a remarkable degree. 

In politics also there were social signs of the 
times. The great event of the early part of the 
period of which we are thinking was, of course, 
the passage of the Reform Bill in 1832. In 1833 
the negroes were emancipated, and the Quakers 
were admitted to Parliament. In 1848 the first 
public-health act was passed. In 1850 the funds 
of the Friendly Societies were legally protected. 
Three years later the United Kingdom alliance 
was formed to suppress the liquor traffic. In 
1857 representative government was given some 
of the Australian colonies, and Jews were ad- 



ENGLAND IN THE TIME OF TENNYSON 59 

mitted to Parliament. In i860 protective duties 
were completely abolished, and the Radicals 
secured the freedom of the press. In 1868 the 
Dominion of Canada was formed. A short time 
afterward women were given votes in municipal 
elections and allowed to vote for school boards. 
In 1873 the " settlement idea " had its inception. 
Two years later the sanitary code was consoli- 
dated. In 1883 the Fabian Society was formed. 
In 1884 Englishmen could make the proud boast 
that no civil disabilities were attached to any class 
of British subjects. In 1891 the London County 
Council was formed, and lords and laborers sat in 
one body. So rapid was the growth of the 
democratic idea in Albion's realm. 

There is also some special legislation that is 
worthy of note, aside from the factory acts al- 
ready mentioned. In 1843 imprisonment for 
debt was abolished in all cases except for fraud. 
The repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 has al- 
ready been cited. Various other acts, such as 
the " Baths and Wash Houses Act," " Free Li- 
braries Act," " Municipal Reform Act," " Edu- 
cation Act," and the " Housing of the Working 
Classes Act," all showed that the needs of the 
people were being recognized and met by the law 
of the land. 

The cause of education in the realm also 
showed a decided, if not a thoroughly satisfac- 



6o SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

tory, advance. In 1833 the government took 
charge of the education of the poor. In 1839 the 
first inspectors of schools were appointed, and a 
special department was created to supervise the 
work. About 1850 the newspapers w^ere multi- 
plying and coming to positions of great power. 
In 1 85 1 there were 159 newspapers in London 
alone. In 1853 there were grants made for 
building schools in poor places. In i860 Rev. 
F. D. Maurice established his " Workingmen's 
College " in London. Seven years later the uni- 
versity-extension movement was started in Cam- 
bridge. In 1870 the voluntary schools were sup- 
plemented by board schools, and the religious 
conditions for school attendance were abolished. 
The right of women to higher and professional 
education was so far accorded that in 1876 every 
recognized medical body was authorized to open 
its doors to women. Two years later the sup- 
plementary charter granted to the University of 
London enabled it to open all its degrees to 
women. In 1880 there began an era of marked 
improvement in schools, which continued up to 
and after the death of Tennyson. This was a 
source of great comfort and hope to the poet, 
who considered education one of the most ef- 
ficient means of remedying social disorders. 

During this period there were indications of 
new interest in the aesthetic side of life. As early 



ENGLAND IN THE TIME OF TENNYSON 6i 

as 1843 a number of schools of design had en- 
tered upon successful careers. In six or seven 
years the pre-Raphaelite movement had begun. 
In 1 85 1 the first great exhibition was held. In 
a few years various Ruskin societies were formed. 
In 1868 William Morris started the " Kelmscott 
Press," and about ten years later began his lec- 
tures on art. 

In the ecclesiastical world there was also move- 
ment and change. In 1834 there was the Wes- 
leyan secession, which resulted in giving much 
more influence to the laity. Partly because of 
this, perhaps, there was, two years later, a move- 
ment toward church reform. In 1865 the Salva- 
tion Army was founded. It was not until the 
year before Tennyson's death that the first " labor 
church " was opened by Trevor in Manchester. 

Such movements and events as have been cata- 
logued reveal the spirit of the time in which Ten- 
nyson lived. It will be interesting to notice how 
he was affected by this spirit, wherein he re- 
flected it, in what way he opposed it, wherein he 
led and inspired it by giving to it its highest 
ideal, and in what respect he seemed untouched 
by it. ^ 

Note. — This study is based upon the poems as found 
in the Macmillan & Co.'s one-volume edition published 
in 1894. All references to poems are to the pages of 
this volume. 



CHAPTER III 

TENNYSON'S IDEA OF MAN 

In every theory of society, in every system of 
social ideals, the fundamental conception is the 
idea of man. Man puts himself into the family 
he creates, the government he forms, the industry 
he conducts. The man of whom the poet con- 
ceives an ideal is the being who enters into re- 
lations with others of his race in the home, the 
community, the nation. As he is in himself, so 
he will be in his relations. As he is in his rela- 
tions, so will be the society which he forms. 
Man's duties, responsibilities, destinies, are de- 
termined by his nature and possibilities. 

Tennyson's words upon this great theme show 
us how exalted was his ideal of this '' creature 
with the upward gaze." In the opening stanzas 
of " In Memoriam " he invokes the " strong Son 
of God, Immortal Love," and declares, " Thou 
madest man." Mr. Allingham,^ reporting a con- 
versation of the poet with himself and a friend, 
quotes these words from Tennyson : " Time is 
nothing; are we not all a part of Deity? " Yet 

^Memoir, Vol. I, p. 514. 

6;z 



TENNYSON'S IDEA OF MAN 63 

he recognizes man as a distinct personality, who 
attains his highest nature when most thoroughly 
himself. 

For a man is not as God, 
But then most Godlike being most a man.* 

Even the reckless pleasure-hunter of " The Vi- 
sion of Sin " does not altogether forget that 
" God's likeness " is " the ground plan " of the 
man who owns that " Death is King." ^ Because 
of this godlike nature he possesses, " man is man 
and master of his fate." ^ His relation to Deity 
is mysterious, but real. That relationship makes 
man great today because of what he is to be. 

We feel we are nothing — for all is Thou and in Thee ; 
We feel we are something — that also has come from 

Thee; 
We know we are nothing — but Thou wilt help us to 

be: 

Hallowed be Thy name — Hallelujah." 

The measureless capacity of man is explained by 
the fact that He who made us " Sent the shadow 
of Himself, the boundless, thro' the human 
soul." « 
This does not mean that man as we know him 

'"Love and Duty," p. 93. 

'P. 123. 

* " The Marriage of Geraint," p. 46. 

""De Profundis," p. 533. 

•"Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," p. 566. 



64 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

is a creature of angelic mold. He has angel in- 
stincts, but he is also akin to the beasts. Man is 
" the piebald miscellany." "^ When controlled by 
anger, he is brother to the wolves.^ It is only 
the king of fools who would hope or expect to 
make men from beasts.^ The harmless people 
of the newly discovered world took the white 
voyagers for " very Gods," but found some of 
them " very fiends from Hell." ^"^ Even the king 
of sacred song declared that men are " insects of 
an hour, that hourly work their brother insects 
wrong." ^^ The fact that we feel within our- 
selves " the Powers of Good " and " the Powers 
of 111 " may be explained by the presence of 
" those about us whom we neither see nor 
name." ^^ Harold was right in one sense in say- 
ing that " we are all poor earthworms crawling 
in this boundless nature," and was himself an 
argument in favor of the truth of the statement.^ ^ 
The many characters portrayed in the poems 
who bring ruin upon others through passion, 
lust, selfishness, malice, hatred, greed, give evi- 

^"The Princess," p. 198. 

' " Balin and Balan," p. 377. 

* " The Last Tournament," p. 449. 

""Columbus," p. 528. 

""Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," p. 566. 

'' Ibid., p. 567. 

'"'The Voice and the Peak," p. 240. 



TENNYSON'S IDEA OF MAN 65 

dence of the poet's knowledge of the possible 
degradation of a human being. An extract from 
a letter to Emily Sellwood, dated 1839, cor- 
roborates this evidence in the words : ** Indeed 
what matters it how much man knows and does 
if he keeps not a reverential looking upward? 
He is only the subtlest beast in the field." ^^ It 
is through the body that man has his most 
intimate connection with the lower world. 
Henry, in the drama of " Becket," states what 
may be taken as Tennyson's own conviction in 
the words 

this beast-body 
That God has plunged my soul in." 

Recognizing thus frankly the relation of man 
to the lower animals, studying with scientific care 
the possible degeneration of the individual 
through passion, selfishness, sin, he still holds 
with unwavering firmness that " the highest is 
the measure of the man." ^® The thought of a 
man is higher than peak or star.^'^ Man is every- 
where recognized as nature's last and greatest 
work.^* Nor is this conception of the noblest 
manhood an idle or impossible dream. He 

" Memoir, Vol. I, p. 169. 

"Poems, p. 717. 

""The Princess," p. 175. 

" " The Voice and the Peak," p. 240. 

" " In Memoriam," Canto LVI, p. 261. 



66 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

pointed to him whom he called " Albert, the 
Good " as one 

Who reverenced his conscience as his king; 
Whose glory was redressing human wr,ong; 
Who spake no slander, no, nor listen'd to it; 
Who loved one only and who clave to her." 

He was one who possessed 

that gentleness 
Which, when it weds with manhood, makes a man."^ 

The very fact that " we needs must love the 
highest when we see it." ^^ is convincing proof 
that " the highest human nature is divine." ^^ 
Guinevere's suffering and sin open her eyes to 
this great truth, and at last she says of Arthur : 
" Thou are the highest and most human, too." ^^ 
Tennyson portrays many different types of char- 
acter, but he never allows the reader to forget 
that God made man in his own image. Even 
when ruined by his sins, man still shows how 
great he is. Tennyson's conception of his true 
worth is indicated by the words of Harold : 

The simple, silent, selfless man 

Is worth a world of tonguesters. 2* 

'""Dedication of Idylls," p. 308. 

'" " Geraint and Enid," p. 367- 

^' " Guinevere," p. 466. 

"' " Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," p. 568. 

^° " Guinevere," p. 466. 

" " Harold," Act V, sc. i, p. 684. 



TENNYSON'S IDEA OF MAN 67 

In 1850 he declared that " the real test of a man 
is not what he knows, but what he is in himself 
and in his relation to others." ^^ Men may con- 
demn the poet's judgment in speaking such splen- 
did eulogy of Wellington or Havelock or Prince 
Albert as ideal men, but no one can truly say that 
he ever forgot the possible divinity of humanity, 
or neglected to call man to the realization of his 
great possibilities. 

That Tennyson was a firm believer in the free- 
dom of man's will is evidenced by his poems and 
by his biography. The lines most frequently 
quoted by him upon this subject are these : 

This main miracle that thou art thou 

With power on thine own act and on the world." 

Miss E. R. Chapman who published A Compan- 
ion to In Mcmoriam in 1888 quotes the poet's 
words upon the first stanza of the last section of 
the great elegy beginning, " O living will, that 
shalt endure." " I did not mean," said Tenny- 
son, " the divine will, as you say. I meant zvill 
in man — free will. You know there is free 
will. It is limhed, of course. We are like birds 
in a cage, but we can hop from perch to perch — 
till the roof is taken off." ^^ it is not necessary 

^'' Memoir, Vol. I, p. 318. 
""Ihid., p. 317. 

"W. T. Stead, "Character Sketch of Tennyson," Re- 
view of Reviews, December, 1892, p. 565. 



68 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

to quote further in support of this statement of 
the poet's behef in free will. Attention is called 
to it here because, without this conviction, no one 
can consistently believe in the responsibility of 
the individual for his own progress and for the 
progress of society. 

Tennyson's careful study of science naturally 
made him a firm adherent of the doctrine of evo- 
lution. He believed every man to be " the heir 
of all ages in the foremost files of time." ^ 
There is really 

nothing lost to man ; 
So that still garden of the souls 
In many a figured leaf enrolls 
The total world since life began." 

" Many a million of ages have gone to the mak- 
ing of man;" ^^ and these ages of making indi- 
cate the value of the product. Edgar, in " The 
Promise of May," ^^ speaks of " the man, the 
child of evolution." The countless years of the 
past that have gone toward the making of man as 
he is today have not completed their task. Man 
still is being made. Other countless years must 
come and go before it can be said that the work 
is finished and man is made. 

" " Locksley Hall," p. I02. 

" " In Memoriam," XLIII, p. 258. / 

'» " Maud," IV, p. 290. 

''Act I, p. 784. 



TENNYSON'S IDEA OF MAN 69 

Science has in its vast conceptions tended to 
belittle man. He is lost in the vast cosmic world. 
The poet recalls us to the truth that the cosmic 
forces are focused upon the human being. The 
making of a man by evolution is a slow process, 
but it gives hope. It works out the beast, and 
lets the ape and tiger die. The great zones of 
sculpture that girded the hall of Camelot with 
their mystic symbols represent four stages in the 
progress of man. 

In the lowest beasts are slaying men, 
And in the second men are slaying beasts, 
And on the third are warriors, perfect men. 
And on the fourth are men with growing wings.'^ 

Now " we are far from the noon of man, there 
is time for the race tO' grow." ^^ Tennyson's 
whole philosophy of the onward march of man 
from the lowest level up to the very summit of 
his grandest destiny is summed up in " The Mak- 
ing of Man.^* 

Where is one that, born of woman, altogether can 

escape 
From the lower world within him, moods of tiger or of 

ape? 
Man as yet is being made, and ere the crowning Age 

of ages. 
Shall not reon after aeon pass and touch him into shape? 

'"' " The Holy Grail," p. 422. 
"' " The Dawn," p. 889. 
''* P. 880. 



70 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

All about him shadows still, but, while the races flower 

and fade. 
Prophet-eyes may catch a glory slowly gaining on the 

shade, 
Till the peoples all are one, and all their voices blend 

in choric 
Hallelujah to the Maker, " It is finished. Man is 

made." 

This triumphant message of the poet, philoso- 
pher, and ideahst prophesies the increasing glory 
of the individual as well as that of the race. 
Bishop Westcott wrote that what impressed him 
most in " In Memoriam " was Tennyson's 
"splendid faith (in the face of the frankest ac- 
knowledgment of every difficulty) in the grow- 
ing purpose of the sum of life, and in the noble 
destiny of the individual man as he offers himself 
for the fulfilment of his little part." ^^ 

We may now summarize briefly the poet's 
teaching concerning man, " the social unit." 
Man is a spirit dwelling in a body. He is a 
product of evolution and carries in himself the 
history of the past ; yet he is free and 

Strong in will 
To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield." 

He has aspirations the highest, hopes the grand- 
est, and comes to self-realization largely through 

" Memoir, Vol. I, p. 300. 
'" " Ulysses," p. 96. 



TENNYSON'S IDEA OF MAN 71 

action in service of his fellow-men. He pos- 
sesses reason and is by nature a doubter; yet he 
is largely influenced by emotions, conventions, 
nature, environment. He is capable of educa- 
tion, longs for knowledge, purity, love. He is 
at once capable of the sublimest heroism in the 
performance of duty, and of most awful degen- 
eration through selfishness and sin. Even failure 
nobly used may become a stepping-stone in his 
progress. Faith, obedience, sorrow, suffering, 
struggle, self-sacrifice, each in its own way min- 
isters to the advancement and highest achieve- 
ment of the man whose noble destiny is pro- 
claimed by his wondrous possibilities. That 
destiny is so great that it passes the bounds of 
earth and finds its perfect fulfilment only in the 
immortal life. This is the man of whom the poet 
thinks and sings, the man who puts himself into 
all his social compacts in family, government, 
church, and society. This is the unit which re- 
mains constant in every computation of social 
values. 



CHAPTER IV 

TENNYSON'S IDEA OF THE WORTH AND WORK 
OF WOMAN 

Tennyson has written so much concerning the 
place and mission of woman, has pictured so 
many types of the female character, that a vol- 
ume would be required to give in detail his study 
and estimate of the qualities which are regarded 
as peculiarly feminine. We need not here re- 
peat the questions : Are Tennyson's women real 
or unreal ; are they portrayed with artistic power ; 
do they show as great poetic insight as is revealed 
in other features of his work? These are inter- 
esting and important questions, but they are not 
ours. We ask : What was Tennyson's concep- 
tion of the function of woman in the social or- 
ganism? and seek to find the correct answer to 
this inquiry. 

In King Arthur, Tennyson has given us his 
ideal man. This beautiful character has no 
feminine counterpart. Arthur was wedded to 
Guinevere, who wrought the ruin of the round 
table. Tennyson has portrayed women of won- 
drous virtue, beauty, love ; but there is not one in 

72 



TENNYSON'S IDEA OF WOMAN 73 

all the gallery of his art to whom we can point 
and say : " This is the ideal woman." The 
noblest women of his song are not the creations 
of his imagination, but the product of his pho- 
tographic skill. Lilian, Mariana, Madeline, 
Oriana, Margaret, are not without attractiveness ; 
but when he wrote of Victoria, in whom " a 
thousand claims to reverence closed 
as mother, wife and queen," or of his own mother 
as he did in " Isabel," ^ he wrote with a power 
not evinced in the descriptive analyses of the 
women of his imagination. The women of his 
brain are pretty girls. The noblest women 
whom he knew were strong in character and life 
and love. In general it is true that the lines 
written in earlier manhood portray women whose 
attractiveness is transient and external, while his 
maturer genius delighted to present those whose 
power is in intellect and noble qualities of heart, 
the virtues that endure. 

He views woman primarily from the stand- 
point of sex. The woman conquers, where she 
conquers at all, not because of her knowledge, 
not because of her keener intuitions or her de- 
veloped power to struggle and attain, but be- 
cause of her sex-relations. Her jealousies 
sharpen her wits, the charms of her woman's na- 
ture bring w^arriors to her feet, and by her loves 

'P. 6. 



74 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

she makes and unmakes men and kingdoms. 
Vivian conquers Merlin. Guinevere dooms the 
round table to dissolution. The Princess as a 
college president is a feminine fizzle, but as the 
beloved of the amorous prince she is winsome, 
strong, and womanly. She finds her true self 
and her place in the world by loyalty to sex-in- 
stincts and by the performance of sex- functions. 
Margaret is besought not to enter the toil of life.^ 
At every crossroads the poet erected a guide- 
post pointing lonely maidens to the 

larger woman-world 
Of wives and mothers.' 

This is not, to the poet's mind, belittling 
woman's nature, or her work in the world. It is 
only saying that her nature is not the same as 
man's, and that her mission in the world is de- 
termined by her natural capacities, tastes, and 
endowments. He really holds up to condemna- 
tion a false idea of woman by putting into the 
mouth of the upstart, raving youth of Locksley 
Hall such words as these: 

Woman's pleasure, woman's pain — 
Nature made them blinder motions bounded in a shal- 
lower brain: 

*P.2I. 

' " The Ring," p. 821. 



TENNYSON'S IDEA OF WOMAN 75 

Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, matched 

with mine. 
Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto 

wine.* 

He does not sanction the theories of Lady Psyche 
and Lady Blanche, who maintained 

that with equal husbandry 
The woman were an equal to the man. 

He does not join in the effort of the Princess, 

To lift the woman's fallen divinity 
Upon an even pedestal with man.^ 

Much less does he approve of the low ideal of the 
fat-faced curate, Edward Bull: / 

God made the woman for the use of man. 
And for the good and increase of the world.® 

On the contrary, he demands that we 

let this proud watchword rest of Equal . . . • 
For woman is not undevelopt man 
But diverse.^ 

If it be true, as one lecturer in the Princess' col- 
lege affirmed, that woman's progress has been re- 
tarded by prejudice and custom and convention, 
these fetters should be broken. The right to 

* P. 102. 

' P. 183. 

° " Edwin Morris," p. 84. 

' " The Princess," p. 214. 



76 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

freedom is the inalienable right of every soul. 
But the fundamental fact is this that 

either sex alone 
Is half itself, and in true marriage lies 
Nor equal, nor unequal : each fulfils 
Defect in each, and always thought in thought, 
Purpose in purpose, will in will, they grow, 
The single, pure and perfect animal. 
The two-celled heart beating, with one full stroke, 
Life." 

This summarizes the poet's doctrine of the sig- 
nificance of sex-differences and of woman's 
proper partnership with man, especially in the 
family. 

Tennyson also puts strong and repeated em- 
phasis upon the motherhood function of woman. 
With this is often connected her peculiar gift of 
ministry as nurse in hospital or home. It was 
Psyche, 

The mother of the sweetest little maid, 
That ever crow'd for kisses, 

to whom Florian addressed the question, 

are you 
That, Psyche, wont to bind my throbbing brow. 
To smooth my pillow, mix the foaming draught 
Of fever, tell me pleasant tales, and read 
My sickness down to happy dreams ? ' 

' Loc. cit. 
'Ibid., p. 177. 



TENNYSON'S IDEA OF WOMAN ^7 

The influence of the child of Psyche upon the 
Princess and her colleagues is evidence of the 
truth of the statement that 

The bearing and the training of a child 
Is woman's wisdom.'" 

Perhaps Tennyson's own mother had by her char- 
acter and life impressed this doctrine most deeply 
upon him, for it was she who is portrayed as his 
ideal in the beautiful passage: 

One 
Not learned, save in gracious household ways, 
Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants, 
No Angel, but a dearer being, all dipt 
In Angel instincts, breathing Paradise, 
Interpreter between the Gods and men. 
Who look'd all native to her place, and yet 
On tiptoe seem'd to touch upon a sphere 
Too gross to tread, and all male minds perforce 
Sway'd to her from their orbits as they moved, 
And girdled her with music. Happy he 
With such a mother ! Faith in woman kind 
Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high 
Comes easy to him, and tho' he trip and fall 
He shall not blind his soul with clay." 

How much this means to all our world is hinted 
by Becket, who finds a wild-fowl frozen upon a 
nest of ice-cold eggs, and exclaims : 

^"Ihid., p. 202. 
^^ Ibid., p. 215. 



78 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

Look ! how this love, this mother, runs thro' all 
The world God made — even the beast — the bird ! " 

This is one of the mighty forces in our world, 
and it is a permanent force. Demeter in Enna 
feels within herself " the deathless heart of moth- 
erhood." ^^ Robin in the forest shows how great 
was the influence of his mother upon him. For 
her sake " and the blessed Queen of Heaven " 
he reverences all women. Tennyson's mother 
being to him the revelation of God, it is not 
strange that he ever showed to her that consid- 
eration and love which could not escape the no- 
tice of his friends.^ ^ In a letter to his aunt he 
speaks of her as " one of the most angelick 
natures on God's earth, always doing good as it 
were by a sort of intuition." She who in later 
years became the mother of his children revealed 
to him still more of the divinity of motherhood 
and exalted in his mind this function of woman 
in the progress of the race.^^ 

The secret of the mother's power in the world 
is not a mystery. Tennyson's philosophy is 
here at one with all his philosophy of life. The 
mightiest forces in the universe are spiritual, and 
of all the spiritual forces the most powerful is 

'" " Becket," Act V, sc. 2, p. 742. 

" " Demeter and Persephone," p. 807. 

^* Memoir, Vol. I, p. 77. 

^'Ibid., p. 331. 



\/ 



TENNYSON'S IDEA OF WOMAN 79 

love. In Tennyson's boyhood home the mother 
" ruled by right of love." This was a lesson 
which the poet never forgot. From it he learned 
that " love is the greatest thing in the world." 

As far back as 1847 the poet's friends quote 
him as saying that one of the two great social 
questions impending in England was " the higher 
education of women." ^^ This remarkable in- 
sight into the social problems of the future is 
shown again and again in the poems. " The 
Princess " is in reality a treatise upon the higher 
education of women. It holds up to ridicule the 
theory that the woman is only undeveloped man, 
and needs the same education as he in order to 
attain her best. He is sure that " the sooner 
woman finds out, before the great educational 
movement begins, that woman is not undeveloped 
man, but diverse," the better it will be for the 
progress of the world.^'^ The Princess is a plea 
for such training for woman as shall best fit 
her to perform her own work in the world. 
This is not the same as that of man, but is 
peculiar to herself. In the tragedy of " Queen 
Mary " Bagenhall speaks of Lady Jane as one 
whose attainments are those of the ideal young 
woman. 

"Ibid., p. 249. 
" Ibid., p. 249. 



8o SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

Seventeen — and knew eight languages ; in music 
Peerless — her needle perfect, and her learning 
Beyond the churchmen ; yet so meek, so modest, 
So wife-like humble to the trivial boy 
Mismatch'd with her for policy ! " 

The actual woman of the time is more accurately 
sketched in a nonsense speech of Dora in " The 
Promise of May." She says : " Can't I speak 
like a lady; pen a letter like a lady; talk a little 
French like a lady ; play a little like a lady? " ^^ 

Remembering the time that " The Princess " 
was published (1847), '^ve may well call it the 
" herald-melody " of the higher education of 
women. Tennyson himself considered the prin- 
cess Ida as one of the noblest of his feminine cre- 
ations. The higher in her subdued the lower. 
In the end she was true to her obligation to the 
social order and to God. 

He disliked pedantry in women, and never hesi- 
tated to say so. Hallam Tennyson thus sums up 
his father's teaching upon this subject : 

She (woman) must train herself to do the large 
work that lies before her, even though she may not be 
destined to be wife or mother, cultivating her under- 
standing not her memory only, her imagination in its 
highest phases, her inborn spirituality and her sympa- 
thy with all that is pure, noble and beautiful, rather 

"Act III, sc. I. p. 608. 
"Act ITT, p. 798. 



TENNYSON'S IDEA OF WOMAN 8i 

than mere social accomplishments ; then, and then only, 
will she further the progress of humanity, then, and 
then only, men will continue to hold her in reverence/" 

''Memoir, Vol. I, p. 250. 



CHAPTER V 

THE FAMILY 

The essential freedom of the soul was one of 
the fundamental postulates of all Tennyson's 
thinking. He would admit the divine right of 
no convention, law, or ruler to annihilate that 
freedom. His problem, then, was to construct 
an ideal social state, with all its necessary laws 
and institutions, which would also give to the in- 
dividual the liberty to which he has an inalien- 
able right. The primary social body whose ex- 
istence makes possible the larger combinations 
of society is the family. Here, then, the problem 
was first confronted. How shall the family be 
organized and maintained so that every member 
shall possess that peculiar freedom which is his 
right, while at the same time the family is made 
to perform its proper function in the social organ- 
ism? 

The volume of 1830 contained " The Poet." 
This poem has one stanza which refers primarily 
to the French Revolution, but which has also a 
certain application to the formal rite by which 

the family is established : 

82 



THE FAMILY 83 

And Freedom rear'd in that august sunrise 

Her beautiful bold brow, 
When rites and forms before his burning eyes 

Melted like snow.^ 

If marriage is a form or rite which stands as a 
barrier to the onward march of Freedom, then 
it must be torn away. But all freedom, political 
and personal, is gained not by ignorance or scorn 
of righteous law, but by obedience to it. Edgar 
in " The Promise of May " argues that the man, 
by flinging aside " the morals of his tribe and 
following his own instincts as his God, 

Will enter on the larger golden age." 

His objection to the bond of marriage is stated 
thus: 

If you will bind love to one forever, 

Altho' at first he takes his bonds for flowers, 

As years go on, he feels them press upon him, 

Begins to flutter in them, and at last 

Breaks thro' them, and so flies away for ever ; 

While had you left him free use of his wings. 

Who knows that he had ever dreamed of flying? ° 

Such words in the mouth of such a man as Edgar 
commend that which they seem to condemn. 
Edgar's condemnation of marriage is really an 
argument for the social necessity of the marriage 
bond. Edgar was himself a failure, and the 

'P. 14. 

"Act I, pp. 784, 785. 



84 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

practical consequences of living his theories brand 
his creed as failure. Marriage, then, is one of 
the essentials for the stability of the family and 
the progress of society. " The Wreck " ^ has the 
necessity of marriage as its moral, though at 
the same time it demonstrates that no law is 
so just as not at times to be unjust to an occa- 
sional individual. If injustice ever be done, it 
must be endured for the sake of the larger good 
to society. Yet even to the individual, marriage 
is necessary for the completed life of either man 
or woman. This is the conclusion of the experi- 
ment of " The Princess." ^ 

There is, however, a very strong insistence 
upon the higher motive for marriage. It is not 
difficult to detect in such lines as these in " Edwin 
Morris," the real contempt felt by the poet for 
the wedding when Mammon is the priest : 

She went, and in one month 
They wedded her to sixty thousand pounds, 
To lands in Kent, and messuages in York, 
And slight Sir Robert with his watery smile 
And educated whisker." 

The crime and sorrow of such an alliance are 
shown again and again. The woman betrothed 

'P. 541. 

* Memoir, Vol. I, p. 249. 

• P. 85. 



THE FAMILY 85 

to one whose face she loathes to see, in order to 
save the ancestral estate, calls to her sister: 
Come, speak a little comfort! all night I pray'd with 

tears, 
And yet no comfort came to me, and now the morn 

appears. 
When he will tear me from your side, who bought me 

for his slave ; 
This father pays his debt with me, and weds me to my 

grave." 
Dora, in " The Promise of May " is confronted 
by a similar condition, and is tempted to marry 
Farmer Dobson, whom she " can't abide," be- 
cause in the financial straits of her family he 
could " keep their heads above water." '^ He is, 
when matched with her Harold, " like a hedge 
thistle by a garden rose." Harold was not the 
" garden rose " she had imagined him, but this 
mistake did not make marriage for money more 
worthy of approval in her eyes. 

So likewise in " The Foresters " Marian was 
urged by old Sir Richard to marry one who 
would pay the mortgage, and the maid spurned 
the suggestion with all the strength of her reso- 
lute soul. Money and land were to her as noth- 
ing compared with her love for Robin.^ There 

• " The Flight," p. 552. 
'P. 796. 
' P. 840. 



86 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

are many other places in the poems where Tenny- 
son's contempt for such a motive for marriage 
is clearly shown. Mr. Aubrey de Vere tells of 
a rebuke administered by the poet to a young 
lady who sat next to him one day at dinner and 
spoke of a certain marriage just announced as a 
very penniless one. He rummaged in his pocket, 
pulled out a penny and slapped it down loudly 
close to her plate, saying : " There, I give you 
that, for that is the God you worship!"^ The 
frequency with which money appears in the 
poems as the motive for marriage is an indica- 
tion of the power of this motive in the formation 
of matrimonial alliances in Tennyson's day. To 
give to it a truthful representation in verse was 
in itself a social service, for thus he held the 
mirror to his time. The vision of the reality 
was the condemnation of that which was seen. 
Tennyson's scorn of the thing condemned is in 
his representation of it. 

Marriage is too sacred to be the slave of policy, 
the poet believes. To be sure, the dying Edward 
in the drama of " Harold " exclaims : 

and a wife, 
What matter who, so she be serviceable 
In all obedience, as mine own hath been:" 

^Memoir, Vol. I, p. 289. 
'"Act III, sc. I, p. 673. 



THE FAMILY 87 

but it was a weak man who gave expression to 
that low sentiment. Even Edith urges Harold 
to marry Lady Aldwyth : 

If this be politic, 
And well for thee and England — and for her — 
Care not for me who love thee." 

Such doctrme was not novel to Aldwyth, who 
declares to Harold that her former marriage to 
the king of Wales was " a match of policy.^ ^ By 
this experience she had, as it were, got her hand 
in, and so was ready for another match of policy. 
The unfortunate result of such a marriage is 
given by Harold : 

I married her for Morcar — a sin against 
The truth of love. Evil for good, it seems, 
Is oft as childless of the good as evil 
For evil." 

Mary's plea for her marriage to Philip was a plea 
for policy. She says : 

If it might please God that I should leave 
Some fruit of mine own body after me, 
To be your king, ye would rejoice thereat. 
And it would be your comfort, as I trust. 



Moreover, if this marriage should not seem. 
Before our own High Court of Parliament, 



Act III, sc. I, p. 676. 
'Act IV, sc. I, p. 679. 
'Act V, sc. I, p. 685. 



88 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

To be of rich advantage to our realm, 
We will refrain, and not alone from this, 
Likewise from any other." 

Sternly rejecting all such motives as these for 
entering upon the marriage relation, Tennyson 
taught that marriage is of the soul, not of the 
body.^^ Marian, the heroine of " The Forest- 
ers," refuses to wed the sheriff for gold or the 
prince for policy, but clings to the outcast Robin 
whom she loves. A marriage thus motived 
lends reason to the belief of the poor that " mar- 
riages are made in Heaven." ^^ It is only a 
man of the spirit of the Northern Farmer, whose 
greed has become blood in his horse's legs that 
say " proputty, proputty, proputty," who could 
give to a son such instruction as this: 
Thou'll not marry for munny — thou's sweet upo' 

parson's lass — 
Noa — thou'll marry for luvv — an' we boath,on us 

thinks tha an ass." 

Eleanor, m the tragedy of " Becket," speaks 
lightly of the afifection of husband for wife and 
of wife for husband ; but the heroic Becket re- 
proves her : " Madam, you do ill to scorn 
wedded love." ^^ How sincere and pure and 

""Queen Mary," Act II, sc. 2, p. 599. 

""The Foresters," Act IV, sc. i, p. 868. 

"' " Aylmer's Field," p. 145. 

'' Poems, p. 231. 

'* " Prologue," p. 697. 



THE FAMILY 89 

deep that love is which binds two souls together 
in ennobling wedlock is more clearly shown by 
the results of such a marriage than by lowering 
any psychological plummet into the depth of love 
itself. Before the true marriage can be con- 
summated, God must have wrought " two spirits 
to one equal mind." ^® When that has been 
wrought, the husband, understanding the sacred- 
ness and full significance of the relationship upon 
which he has entered, can say to his chosen : 

In the name of wife, 

And in the rights that name may give, 
Are clasped the moral of thy life, 

And that for which I care to live.'* 

This does not mean the subjection of one to the 
other. There is here no slavery, but the com- 
pleted life for each. The lover declares to the 
Princess : 

my hopes and thine are one : 
Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself." 

Even to the Lotos-Eaters, the memory of w^edded 
life was dear.^^ Love increased in purity and 
strength with the years. In later life the hus- 
band thought of the one whom he had known 

" " The Miller's Daughter," p. 39. 
-" " The Day Dream L'Envoi," p. 108. 
" Poems, p. 215. 
'■'Ibid., p. 55- 



90 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

most intimately in the sacred relation of the fam- 
ily as 

the idol of my youth, 

The darling of my manhood, and alas ! 

Now the most blessed memory of mine age.^^ 

Though this poem was written before Tenny- 
son's own marriage, these words are a true state- 
ment of his own growing affection for his wife. 
" The peace of God came into my life before the 
altar when I wedded her," he declared in after- 
days.^'* The obligation of husband to wife and 
of wife to husband is the obligation imposed by 
the purest love. Each should seek the most com- 
plete and perfect development of the noblest pow- 
ers of the other. The relation is not that of 
master and servant, but of two godlike souls in- 
dissolubly bound together, not as equals, but 
" like in difference," growing liker in the long 
years," each fulfilling defect in each until they 
become " the two-celled heart beating, with one 
full stroke. Life." ^^ 

The proverbial perversity of Cupid, and the 
dramatic possibilities of the treatment of love 
between those of different rank, naturally suggest 
the frequent recurrence of this situation in the 
poems. Tennyson's use of this situation is, how- 

" " Gardener's Daughter," p. TJ. 
'* Memoir, Vol. I, p. 329. 
"'' " Princess," p. 214. 



THE FAMILY 91 

ever, traditional rather than original. There is 
variety in his dramatic representation of the 
problem, and in his portrayal of the actors in the 
drama, but his solution of the difficulty, if indeed 
it can be called a solution at all, is neither new 
nor striking. He gives noble emphasis to the 
truth that it is character and not rank that makes 
the man or the woman. In " Lady Clara Vere 
de Vere " there is perhaps the strongest and most 
beautiful statement of this principle as related 
to the possibility of marriage between those of 
different rank. It was much for an Englishman 
to say 

A simple maiden in her flower 
Is worth a hundred coat-of-arms. 

Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere, 

From yon blue heavens above us bent 
The gardener Adam and his wife 

Smile at the claims of long descent. 
Howe'er it be, it seems to me, 

'Tis only noble to be good. 
Kind hearts are more than coronets. 

And simple faith than Norman blood.'"* 

Despite this fine statement, when " the daughter 
of a cottager " wedded Sir Edward Head, she 
was declared to be " out of her sphere," and only 
unhappiness was the result.^' When the Lord 

""Lady Clara Vere de Vere," p. 49. 
" " Walking to the Mail," p. 82. 



92 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

of Burleigh loved and wed a village maiden, he 

unknowingly brought upon her " the burthen of 

an honour unto which she was not born," and 

So she droop'd and droop'd before him. 



Then before her time she died.^* 

In " In Memoriam " the poet compares 
some poor girl whose heart is set 
On one whose rank exceeds her own,-' 

to himself as he thinks longingly of Hallam in 
his higher life beyond the grave. Such a com- 
parison inevitably suggests to the reader that in 
the mind of Tennyson between those of different 
rank there was a great gulf fixed. For man or 
woman to pass that gulf and join hands with one 
loved on the further side in happy marriage was 
indeed difficult. 

This is the poet's recognition of a fact, an 
actual condition in the society of his time. This 
does not imply that he approved of that which he 
portrayed. There is reason to believe that he 
distinctly disapproved of it. Lady Clare stills 
weds Lord Ronald and presumably " lives happy 
ever after," even when it is known that she is 
only the daughter of the nurse and not Lady 
Clare at all.^*^ King Cophetua likewise 

""The Lord of Burleigh," p. 117. 

='LX, p. 262. 

**"'Lady Clare," p. 114. 



THE FAMILY 93 

sware a royal oath : 
This beggar maid shall be my queen ! " 

Such lines as " Ring out false pride in place and 
blood " ^2 indicate that into these poems he puts 
his own thought and conviction. He knew that 
" The thrall in person may be free in soul." ^^ 
He had and expressed a contempt for the " snob- 
bery of English society," ^* whatever form it 
took. In what was originally verse HI in 
" Maud " he thus holds up to derision the " Lord- 
Captain up at the Hall " : 

Captain ! he to hold command ! 
He can hold a cue, he can pocket a ball ; 
And sure not a bantam cockerel lives 
With a weaker crow upon English land, 
Whether he boast of a horse that gains, 
Or cackle his own applause.^ 

Such portrayals of rank without character reveal 
unmistakably Tennyson's own thought of the 
true relation of members of one class to those of 
another. His appeal was to reality, not to name 
or place. Where souls were joined together in 
enduring love he knew that no false pride of rank 

""The Beggar Maid," p. 119. 
'" " In Memoriam," CVL, p. 278. 
" " Gareth and Lynette," p. 320. 
"* Memoir, Vol. I, p. 278. 
" Ibid., p. 403. 



94 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

should put them asunder. Yet that marriage be- 
tween those of different social station often 
meant keen suffering for sensitive souls of the 
lower class who became partners in such an alli- 
ance, he frankly avowed. 

He was himself an ardent lover of children and 
a firm believer in the exalted mission of children 
in the family and the state. He has little sym- 
pathy with the parent who tyrannizes over the 
child and makes his own word or whim a law 
which the child must blindly obey. The father 
in the poem of " Dora " is such an unpitying 
tyrant.^^ The child who has come to years of 
discretion and still remains the " puppet to a 
father's threat " ^"^ is deserving of little respect. 
Parental love that is intelligent and strong will 
demand and receive an obedience that is ready 
and glad. Children bind parents together in a 
holier love and exalt the family as the defense 
of society. It was a child that called forth the 
tender affection of Guinevere, and caused her for 
a moment to forget herself and her cares till the 
little Nestling past from her.^^ Later it was a 
child within the nunnery walls who became the 
companion of the despairing queen, and while in- 
nocently wounding her with tales of the wicked 

" " Locksley Hall," p. 99. 

" " The Last Tournament," p. 443. 



THE FAMILY 95 

consort of the noble Arthur, yet at the same time 
aroused in her the high ambitions which aided 
in her redemption. One cannot help wondering 
what influence the Nestling would have had upon 
the character of the queen if the babe had lived. 
Would Guinevere and the Round Table have thus 
been saved? The child is really the heroine of 
" The Princess " and brings the college to sanity 
and success. 

The importance of the child to the family and 
to society gives to the perils that threaten him 
very great significance. One of the children of 
Enoch Arden died because of poverty, or because 
the mother's business often called her from home. 
This was but one of many such innocent sufferers. 
In " Maud " we read of the time 

When a Mammonite mother kills her babe for a burial 

fee, 
And Timour-mammon grins on a pile of children's 

bones." 

Farther on in the same poem he declares that all 
the arsenic is used up in poisoning the babes."*** 
The spinster in the dialect poem " The Spinster's 
Sweet-Arts " says : " I niver not wish'd fur 
childer, I hevn't naw likin' fur brats ; " ^^ and she 
is recognized as the representative of a class. 

"'P. 287. 
*' P. 306. 
"P. 559. 



96 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

Thousands of unwelcome children are born on 
crowded streets, and " city children soak and 
blacken soul and sense in city slime." ^^ These 
are facts to be reckoned with by the poet, who 
is also a student of society, who knows of the 
significance of the child to the family and to the 
state. He condemned the Cambridge of 1830 
because it stood apart from its age, 

Because the lips of little children preach 
Against you, you that do profess to teach 
And teach us nothing, feeding not the heart." 

A favorite saying of his was : " Make the lives 
of children as beautiful and as happy as possi- 
ble." ^"^ The perils of society caused by the neg- 
lect or abuse of children he would seek to banish 
by making the life of every child bright and 
joyous. 

That the poet was not without interest and be- 
lief in the doctrine of heredity is evidenced by 
various passages in the poems. Speaking of 
" Maud " he says : 

Some peculiar, mystic grace 
Made her only the child of her mother, 
And heap'd the whole inherited sin 
On that huge scapegoat of the race, 
All, all upon the brother." 

**"Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," p. 566. 
*^ Memoir, Vol. I, p. 67. 
"Ibid., p. 371. 
"Sec. 13, p. 295. 



THE FAMILY 97 

Balin looked with profound admiration upon 
Lancelot and marveled that he himself was so far 
surpassed by this favorite of the king, muttering : 

These be gifts, 

Born with the blood, not learnable, divine, 

Beyond my reach."^ 

The wife and mother who had deserted her hus- 
band and child for a man who was a dwarf in 
stature but a giant in intellect, when she made 
her confession to her mother, sought to comfort 
herself with the words : " But if sin be sin, not 
inherited fate, as many will say." ^'^ The An- 
cient Sage takes up the theme and says: 

In the fatal sequence of this world 

An evil thought may soil thy children's blood.** 

" Locksley Hall Sixty Years After " gives us a 
cautious yet positive statement of the same doc- 
trine : 
She the worldling born of worldlings — father, mother 

— be content, 
Ev'n the homely farm can teach us there is something 

in descent.'"' 

But the most dramatic portrayal of the principle 
occurs in " The Promise of May," in which the 
poet puts into the mouth of Harold the words : 

" " Balin and Balan," p. 372. 
" " The Wreck," p. 543. 
*^ Poems, pp. 551, 552. 
^"P. 561. 



98 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

O this mortal house. 
Which we are born into, is haunted by 
The ghosts of the dead passions of dead men ; 
And these take flesh again with our own flesh, 
And bring us to confusion.^" 

His belief in heredity was to him, however, not 
a cause for despair, but rather a call to conflict. 
In the course of his talk with a young man who 
was going to the university he said : " The real 
test of a man is not what he knows, but what he 
is in himself and in his relation to others. For 
instance, can he battle against his own bad in- 
herited instincts, or brave public opinion in the 
cause of truth." ^^ Tennyson not only believed 
and taught that bad inherited instincts may be 
conquered, but himself sounded the call to battle 
with those instincts. 

Perhaps no writer has ever given to the world 
pictures of English home and country life more 
original and beautiful in form than those given 
by Tennyson in such poems as " The Gardener's 
Daughter," "Dora," " Audley Court," "The 
Talking Oak," " Locksley Hall," " Godiva," 
"Lady Clare," "The Lord of Burleigh," and 
several others. He believed and taught that the 
stability and greatness of a nation depend largely 
upon the home life of the people. He had true 

""Act II, p. 789. 
'''■Memoir, Vol. I, p. 318. 



THE FAMILY 99 

joy in the family duties and affections. It is 
only the simple truth to say, as his son has said, 
that this was one of the secrets of his power over 
mankind. ^- 

'^Ibid., p. 189. 



CHAPTER VI 

SOCIETY 

It is not to be expected that a poet, viewing- life 
from the standpoint of the artist, will deal largely 
in the technical terms of the sociologist. A man 
may have an important message to deliver con- 
cerning the needs and destiny of society, even 
though he use some other phrase than " the so- 
cial organism " to embody his profoundest 
thought. We shall look in vain in the writings 
of Tennyson for terms which are regarded by 
some as words of mag-ic in social science. He 
has none such. Practical students of sociology 
will regard this as a virtue rather than a defect. 
What he has to say of the nature and vices and 
mission of human society he says as a poet. He 
is, to be sure, especially attracted by the dramatic 
phases of the social problem, but these are to 
him, after all, only outward signs of inner con- 
ditions, only incidents in a journey whose end no 
man can clearly foresee nor fully foretell. His 
critics accused him of living in the past. Carlyle 
described him to Sir J. Simeon as " sitting on a 
dung-heap among innumerable dead dogs." * 

^Memoir, Vol. I, p. 340. 

100 



SOCIETY loi 

He said of himself : " The far future has been 
my world always." ^ He did study the past and 
sing of its greatest achievements, but the past 
was to him a prophecy of the future. He did 
live in the far future as his world, but it is a 
future which is the natural fulfilment of the 
prophecies of the present and the past. 

His ideal of society is really determined by his 
ideal of man. Man is a free spiritual being 
dwelling in a body. He is in part a product of 
evolution, yet aspires after infinitely greater 
things than he has ever attained. Endowed with 
such unmeasured capacities crying for develop- 
ment, he has claims for recognition in the social 
body which must not be ignored. In general, the 
interests of the individual and the interests of so- 
ciety are one. but there are times when this seems 
not to be the fact. The well-being of society is 
largely dependent upon the sacredness of the fam- 
ily. The highest interests of the family are 
largely dependent upon the sanctity of the mar- 
riage bond. That sanctity must be maintained, 
even though it seems to work hardship for the 
individual. This is well illustrated in "The 
Wreck." 

The exception gives added weight to the rule. 
He entitles his lines on pantheism " The Higher 
Pantheism," because, unlike this doctrine in the 

*Ibid., p. 1 68. 



102 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

East, he gives the individual full and free ac- 
tion. This poem recognizes the universal with- 
out obscuring the individual. The " Flower in 
the Crannied Wall " expresses essentially the 
same thought. Science has by its vast concep- 
tions tended to give man a relatively lower place 
in the great cosmic world. The poet calls us back 
to the true idea of the individual, and shows the 
real relation which exists between the progress of 
man and that of society. As man advances, so- 
ciety progresses. The exception just cited is 
more apparent than real, for Tennyson makes 
large use of the doctrine of self-sacrifice. It is 
only as the individual loses his own life for the 
sake of love that he saves it for himself and for 
society. There is then no actual inconsistency 
between the lines in " Amphion," 

And I must work thro' months of toil. 
And years of cultivation, 

Upon my proper patch of soil 
To grow my own plantation.' 

and the more exalted spirit of the " Ode on the 

Death of the Duke of Wellington/' 
Who cares not to be great 
But as he saves or serves the state.* 

There is here no chance for asceticism. Every 
true man says of himself : " I will not shut me 

'P. 109. 
*P. 220. 



SOCIETY 103 

from my kind." ^ He comes so near to his fel- 
low-men of different creed and color that he can 
" cull from every faith and race the best," ^ and 
at the same time give to others the best he has 
gained from his own life-experience. This is 
really the best preparation that anyone can have 
to answer the questions which the poet imagines 
the Almighty to ask everyone who appears before 
him in the next life: " Have you been true to 
yourself and given in My Name a cup of cold 
water to one of these little ones?""^ He does 
not cry out against the age as hopelessly bad, but 
tries to show wherein it is wrong, in order that 
each individual may do his best to redeem it. 
The evils he denounces are individual, and can 
be cured only as each man looks to his own 
heart.® This has real meaning for society, for he 
held that each individual has a spiritual and eter- 
nal significance with relation to other individual 
wills.^ 

Tennyson came to the noble conception of 
human society as a great brotherhood, but he ar- 
rived at that destination via his own England. 
It seems hardly thinkable now that he could have 

»"In Memoriam," CVIII. p. 278. 
' " Akbar's Dream," p. 879. 
' Memoir, Vol. I, p. 309. 
*Ibid., p. 468. 
* Ibid., p. 319 



104 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

been so chilled by the cold reception given his 
earlier poems as seriously to consider changing 
his residence to Jersey or the south of France or 
Italy.^"^ One could scarcely think of Tennyson 
as living anywhere except in England. He was 
English to the core. He said : 

That man's the best Cosmopolite 
Who loves his native country best," 

and there could be no better illustration of the 
statement than Tennyson himself. His patriotic 
stanzas give ample evidence that it was his own 
conviction that 

there's no glory 
Like his who saves his country." 

It was not, however, a narrow, insular England 
to which he gave his heart's devotion, but the 
England of broad domain, of many peoples, and 
with a noble destiny to fulfil as the divine bene- 
factor of the world. It was to him " the eye, 
the soul of Europe." and he called upon states- 
men to 

Keep our noble England whole, 
And save the one true seed of freedom sown 
Betwixt a people and their ancient throne, 
That sober freedom out of which there springs 
Our loyal passion for our temperate kings ; 

^"Memoir, Vol. I, p. 97. 

" " Hands All Round," p. 575. 

" " Queen Mary," p. 595. 



SOCIETY 105 

For, saving that, ye help to save mankind 

Till public wrong be crumbled into dust, 

And drill the raw world for the march of mind, 

Till crowds at length be sane, and crowns be just." 

He further declares in " The Third of Febru- 
ary:" 

No little German state are we 
But the one voice in Europe." 

This judgment of the position of England among 
the powers of the world was justified by history. 
It was not a new thing for this great land to con- 
tend for liberty. We have " fought for freedom 
from our prime," he cried. ^^ With such a past 
the Foresters could sing with all the enthusiasm 
of their sturdy natures : 

There is no land like England 

Where'er the light of day be ; 
There are no hearts like English hearts 

Such hearts of oak as they be." 

When he cried, " Britons, guard your own," he 
called upon his people to defend that which had 
the deepest significance for the world as well as 
for themselves. To be true to their own past was 
to be true to their highest and widest world- 
destiny.^"^ England was to him " the little isle 

" " Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington," p. 220. 

"P. 221. 

'° P. 222. 

" " The Foresters," Act II, so. i, p. 846. 

"Memoir, Vol. I, p. 344. 



io6 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

where a man may still be true," ^^ and every- 
where the one who is true to himself cannot be 
false to any man. In one of the closing lines of 
" Maud " we have a statement of a conclusion 
arrived at after much struggle, and which shows 
the natural progress from love of country to 
union with all mankind : " I have felt with my 
native land, I am one with my kind." ^^ This 
conclusion is reached despite a frank admission 
of Britain's gravest faults, her " lust for gold," 
her adoration of " her one sole God — the mil- 
lionaire," ^^ and all the vices usually attendant 
upon such lust and gross idolatry. 

Such individual and social crimes are not pe- 
culiar to the people of his England. They are 
everywhere. As they are traitors to the reign 
of love in one land, so they war against the forces 
of human brotherhood everywhere, seeking to 
advance and take possession of the world. Now 

we cannot be kind to each other here for an hour ! 
We whisper and hint and chuckle, and grin at a 
brother's shame," 

whether that brother be in our own or in another 
land. It is not a great extension of the patriotic 
conception to include in the national brotherhood 

"Loc. cit., p. 438. 

"P. 308. 

^ P. 307. 

" " Maud," p. 290. 



SOCIETY 107 

the " Indian brothers " who fought bravely in 
" The Defence of Lucknow." ^^ A common flag 
does much to assure those who fight under it 
that they are one people. It is much more sig- 
nificant when he says, in his lines " To Victor 
Hugo " : 

England, France, all man to be 

Will make one people ere man's race be run.'^ 

France was the land of revolution where was the 
" red, fool fury of the Seine ; " and everyone 
knows how cordially Tennyson hated these bloody 
outbreaks of the lawless spirit. 

To include the people of France in his thought 
of the coming brotherhood was a distinct ad- 
vance. Still further progress in the same direc- 
tion is chronicled in the " Epilogue," where these 
words occur : 

Slav, Teuton, Kelt, I count them all 

My friends and brother souls, 
With all the peoples, great and small, 
That wheel between the poles." 

We do not wonder that such a citizen of the 
world and lover of mankind sees in vision " all 
the millions one at length." ^^ Where there is 
a oneness of the millions, where one individual 

^'P. 520. 

"'' P. 534- 
"P. 570. 
="'Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," p. 564. 



io8 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

will has a definite spiritual significance to other 
individual wills, love and mutual service are to 
be confidently expected. When the practical 
motto is " all for each and each for all," ^^ it will 
not be long to wait 

Till each man find his own in all men's good, 
And all men work in noble brotherhood."^ 

This is the complete and perfected society of 
which Tennyson dreamed, universal in its scope, 
unselfish in its motive, noble and pure in the love 
which binds all together in mutual service. 

But this condition has not yet been attained. 
Society is not yet a brotherhood. It is divided 
into classes which are mutually antagonistic. 
There are oppression and greed on the one hand, 
and rebellion and hatred and open conflict on the 
other. There are tyranny and crime and war in 
the world. How to change the actual conditions 
of human society today into the ideal state which 
the poet has conceived, is the problem. In the 
" Miller's Daughter " there is an indication of 
the existence of a social problem. In " Lady 
Clare " there is a more definite statement of the 
great question : 

^' Loc. cit., p. 564. 

""Ode at International Exhibition," p. 223. 



SOCIETY 109 

These two parties still divide the world — 

Of those that want, and those that have; and still 

The same old sore breaks out from age to age.'" 

The English lord is frequently portrayed as 
wholly unworthy of rank or honor. The city 
clerk, whose gains were small and whose work 
was hard, was a representative of a large and un- 
fortunate class.-'' " The sons of the glebe scowled 
at their great lord." ^^ They knew his Hfe as 
servants know the lives of their masters. But 
the rich know little or nothing of the Hves of the 
poor. Robin Hood, an outlaw, was declared by 
Sir Richard to be the truest friend of the peo- 
ple,^^ and Robin himself said that the " gentler " 
know naught " o' the food o' the poor." ^^ In 
" Locksley Hall Sixty Years After " these sensi- 
ble words are spoken to the young Leonard : 

You, my Leonard, use and not abuse your day. 
Move among your people, know them, follow him who 

led the way, 
Strove for sixty widow'd years to help his homlier 

brother men. 
Served the poor, and built the cottage, raised the 

school, and drain'd the fen." 

'' " Walking to the Mail," p. 82. 

-'"Sea Dreams," p. 156. 

•"' " Aylmer's Field," p. 153. 

" " The Foresters," Act I, sc. i, p. 840. 

''"Ibid.. Act II, sc. I, p. 849. 

==P. 567. 



no SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

The poet was in his own hfe true to this teaching 
of his verse. His son informs us that the sever- 
est punishment he ever received from his father 
was for some want of respect to one of their 
servants.^^ 

Tennyson does not fail to recognize the pres- 
ence of noble quaHties in those of high rank, as 
in the man who left his wine and horses and play 
to sit with Maud in her sickness, to read to her 
night and day and tend her like a nurse.^^ But 
the reader is never left with the impression that 
such nobleness of character is the result of rank, 
Tennyson puts his own conviction into such words 
as those uttered by Sir Gareth to the maiden de- 
claring that the knave that does service as full 
knight is all as good as any knight.^^ " The 
gentler born the more bound to be serviceable." ^"^ 
In " Queen Mary " the Lords are bought with 
Philip's gold.^^ Becket speaks of the 

baron-brutes 
That havock'd all the land in Stephen's day.'° 

Dobson, in " The Promise of May," solves the 
whole problem at a stroke and cries : " Damn 

^* Memoir, Vol. I, p. 370. 

" " Maud," p. 299. 

'* " Gareth and Lynette," p. 334. 

'"'' " Lancelot and Elaine," p. 408. 

^'Act III, sc. I, p. 605. 

"""Becket," Act I, sc. i, p. 701. 



SOCIETY III 

all gentlemen, says I." '^^ Robin, in " The For- 
esters," speaks of " these proud priests, and these 
Barons, Devils, that make this blessed England 
hell." ^^ Friar Tuck threatens Prince John and 
mutters of him to the sheriff : " He may be 
prince; he is not gentleman." ^^ In a letter to 
Mrs. Russell, written in 1847, the poet puts into 
prose something of his feeling toward those of 
rank. He says : " Why do all English country 
gentlemen talk of dogs, horses, roads, crops, etc? 
It is better after all than affecting Art and Feel- 
ing : they would make a poor hand of that, though 
yon tried to help them out. I wish they would 
be a little kinder to the poor. I would honor 
them then and they might talk what they 
would." ^^ 

Wealth and rank are at least supposed to go 
together. There are so many exceptions to this 
statement that practical people are often inclined 
to construe it as a " supposition contrary to fact." 
Wealth is, however, a co-worker with rank in di- 
viding society into classes and postponing the 
dawn of the day of universal brotherhood. The 
possession of wealth imposes the obligation to 
serve, but many who possess it are not kind to 

'"Act II, p. 793. 

"Act III, sc. I, p. 857. 

*- Ibid., Act IV, sc. I, p. 807. 

*^ Memoir, Vol. I, p. 243. 



112 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

the poor. When they bestow help upon those 
who are in need, they throw their gifts carelessly 
as those " who care not how they give." ^^ " The 
gold that gilds the straiten'd forehead of the 
fool " *^ is only a curse to the one who possesses 
it and to the society in which he moves. It is 
only wealth wisely used that is a blessing to the 
world. The love of money for its own sake leads 
to corruption in society and the separation of 
man from his brother. " Every door is barr'd 
with gold, and opens but to golden keys," and 
" the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that 
Honour feels."*® 

But there are other truthful accusations to be 
laid at the door of humanity-corrupting gold : 

This filthy marriage-hindering Mammon made 
The harlot of the cities." 

" Cowardice " is " the child of lust for gold." ^^ 
The Earl of Devon was an example of a class and 
of him Mary speaks as 

the fool — 
He wrecks his health and wealth on courtesans. 
And rolls himself in carrion like a dog." 



M « 

46 I 



"Tithonus," p. 96. 

' Locksley Hall," p. 99. 
** Ibid., p. 100. 
" " Aylmer's Field," p. 148. 
** " To the Queen," p. 475. 
*" " Queen Alary," Act I, sc. 5, p. 58. 



SOCIETY 



113 



The press of a thousand cities has felt the influ- 
ence of this corrupting power, and " easily vio- 
lates virgin Truth for a coin or a cheque." ^^ 
Against the worship of this money-god the poet 
gave his voice and his example. In time of 
threatened financial loss which would mean much 
to him, his wife wrote : " A. showed a noble 
disregard of money, much as the loss would af- 
fect us." SI The first canto of " Maud " Tenny- 
son was accustomed to read aloud in a sort of 
rushing recitative through the long sweeping 
lines of satire and invective against the greed for 
money.s- He was often in need of money him- 
self, but he never could or would write a line for 
it. That would have been to him the perversion 
of his art.s-"^ 

He looked forward to the coming of a nobler 
spirit into society — a spirit that masters wealth 
and insists upon making it, not the destruction 
of the few through luxury and excess, but the 
servant of the many through intelligent, unselfish 
use for the good of the world. So he calls: 
" Ring out the narrowing lust for gold." ^'^ A 
part of his vision of " The Golden Year " is of 
the time 

""'The Dawn," p. 888. 

"Memoir, Vol. I, p. 415. 

^'^ Ibid., p. 396. 

'-^ Ibid., p. 280. 

" " In Memoriam," CVI, p. 278. 



114 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

When wealth no more shall rest in mounded heaps, 

But smit with freer light shall slowly melt 

In many streams to fatten lower lands, 

And light shall spread, and man be liker man."' 

The division of society into classes results in 
the corruption and degradation of those possessed 
of wealth and rank, inducing in them idleness, 
luxury, and excess. The poor suffer in a differ- 
ent way, but none the less severely. Tennyson 
has done much to make the sufferings and pri- 
vations of the poor a reality to the reading and 
thinking people of England and the world. 
When Enoch Arden was disabled by an accident, 
and his income was decreased by the " creeping 
of another hand across his trade," he saw as in 
a nightmare his children leading " low, miserable 
lives of hand-to-mouth," and his beloved wife a 
beggar.^® So near to the line of actual want was 
he compelled to live that, when temporarily dis- 
abled, he was in abject fear of beggary. In the 
cities " the poor are hovell'd and hustled together, 
each sex, like swine," and have chalk and alum 
and plaster sold to them for bread.^"^ Devitalized 
by such unhealthful food, and imperiled by con- 
ditions of life which make morality all but an 
impossibility, what wonder that some people say 

""P. 94. 

"" " Enoch Arden," p. 126. 

" " Maud," Part I, sees, ix and x, p. 287. 



SOCIETY 



115 



with the Northern Farmer (new style) that " the 
poor in a loomp is bad." ^» This is unjust, 
though it is true that some of them do waste their 
wages at a pothouse,^** some steal coal to warm 
their window-broken, unsanitary hovels,^*^ and 
those who become beggars tramp the country, 
filch the linen from the hawthorn, poison the 
house dogs, and scare lonely maidens at the 
farmsteads.^i These, however, are the acts of 
individuals or of classes among the poor. Be- 
cause of such facts as these one has no right to 
say that " the poor in a loomp is bad." On the 
contrary, 

Plowmen, Shepherds, have I found, and more than 

once, and still could find, 
Sons of God, and kings of men in utter nobleness of 

mind."' 

The condition of a humble milkmaid was not 
so hard as to keep Princess Elizabeth from envy- 
ing her joys and labors.®^ This indicates that 
life in the country may be more tolerable for the 
poor than life in the city. It shows as well that 
the rich and titled have their sorrows and suffer- 
ings as certainly as do the poor. Every condi- 

"' Poems, p. 232. 

'"'The Promise of May," Act III, p. 795. 

""■ Ibid. 

"^"The Foresters," Act III, sc. i, p. 858. 

"'' " Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," p. 563. 

"' " Queen Mary," p. 620. 



ii6 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

tion in life has its joys, its delights, and its hard- 
ships and griefs. Rich and poor should share 
each other's burdens and recognize the bonds of 
a common brotherhood, because of their real kin- 
ship to each other and the commonness of the 
deepest life-experiences. 

Tennyson felt the hardships of the poor. In 
the rick-burning days he largely sympathized 
with the laborers in their demands, though he 
saw that they were taking the wrong course to 
accomplish their purpose.^"* The riots of the 
poorer classes, so far from arousing his disgust 
and condemnation, only filled him with an earnest 
desire to do something to help those who lived in 
misery among the " warrens of the poor." ^^ 
Hallam shared this laudable ambition of his 
friend, and the two often talked of the wretched- 
ness of the poorer classes which so weighed upon 
their minds. They appreciated the great diffi- 
culty of learning how to remedy these evils, but 
they determined not to lose hold of the real in 
seeking the ideal. Hallam wrote: " Where the 
ideas of time and sorrow are not, and sway not 
the soul with power, there is no true knowledge 
in Poetry or Philosophy." ®® In a letter to Au- 
brey de Vere, written in 1847, Tennyson showed 

^Memoir, Vol. I, p. 41. 
^^bid., p. 42. 
*^Ibid., p. 83. 



SOCIETY 117 

the same sympathetic interest in the poor, and 
feared that the bitter weather would be very hard 
upon them.^"'' When he visited Ireland at the in- 
vitation of this friend, he was greatly shocked 
at the poverty of the peasantry and the marks 
of havoc wrought in the country by the great 
potato famine.^^ He called upon the poor in his 
own vicinage and aided them from his own re- 
sources. The admiration of an old man who 
committed his poems to memory because he was 
too poor to buy a printed copy, Tennyson reck- 
oned the highest honor he had ever received up 
to that time. Thus throughout his life, by poems 
and influence and example, he called to the people 
of his land and of every land : 

Ring out the feud of rich and poor. 
Ring in redress to all mankind."" 

There is nothing to contradict, and much to 
support, the belief that it was Tennyson's own 
conviction that " ourselves are full of social 
wrong." '^^ It becomes men who are awake to 
the needs of the time to think earnestly 

How best to help the slender store, 
How mend the dwellings of the poor.^'' 

''Ibid., p. 261. 

" Ibid., p. 288. 

°* " In Memoriam," CVI, p. 277. 

'""The Princess," p. 217. 

""To the Rev. F. D. Maurice," p. 234. 



ii8 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

how aid the one who " writhes in a world of 
the weak trodden down by the strong .... a 
world all massacre, murder and wrong." '^- 
There is still many a son 

who from the wrongs his father did 
Would shape himself a right." 

Often " the Higher wields the Lower, while the 
Lower is the Higher." "^^ Not only is it true, 
as we have already stated, that " city children 
soak and blacken soul and sense in city slime, 
but also : 

There among the glooming alleys Progress halts on 

palsied feet. 
Crime and hunger cast our maidens by the thousand on 

the street. 
There the master scrimps his haggard sempstress of 

her daily bread, 
There a single sordid attic holds the living and the 

dead. 
There the smouldering fire of fever creeps across the 

rotted floor. 
And the crowded couch of incest in the warrens of the 

poor." 

Throughout " Maud " the social evils are por- 
trayed in vivid colors. The hero in this poem 
says that the sins of a nation, which he calls 

""Despair," p. 545. 

" " Gareth and Lynette," p. 323. 

" " Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," p. 563. 

''^ Ibid., p. 566. 



SOCIETY 



119 



" civil war," are deadlier in their effect than what 
is commonly known as war itself J** With such 
conditions existing in the world, we cannot won- 
der that some cry out against the social order, as, 
when the crowd passed the palace in London in 
the days of " Queen Mary," the third voice said : 
" What am I ? One who cries continually with 
sweat and tears to the Lord God that it would 
please him out of his infinite love to break down 
all kingship and queenship, all priesthood and 
prelacy ; to cancel and abolish all bonds of human 
allegiance, all the magistracy, all the nobles, and 
all the wealthy; and to send us again, according 
to his promise, the one King, the Christ, and all 
things in common, as in the day of the first 
church, when Christ Jesus was KingJ"'' Edgar, 
in " The Promise of May," voices a similar ex- 
treme and unwarranted opinion : 

The storm is hard at hand, will sweep away 
Thrones, churches, ranks, traditions, customs, 

marriage 
One of the feeblest." 

Harold, in the same drama, speaks thus: 

What I that have been call'd a Socialist, 

A Communist, a Nihilist — what you will ! — 



'"Memoir, Vol. I, p. 401. 

^ " Queen Mary," Act V, sc. 4, p. 

" P. 783. 



120 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

Utopian idiotcies 
They did not last three Junes. Such rampant weeds 
Strangle each other, die, and make the soil 
For Caesars, Cromwells, and Napoleons, 
To root their power in. I have freed myself 
From all such dreams, and some will say because 
I have inherited my Uncle." 

The ruin wrought by false social ideals, espe- 
cially that which relates to marriage, is pictured 
in the closing lines spoken by Dora in " The 
Promise of May." ^^ This is most emphatic 
condemnation of the false ideals themselves. 

Tennyson saw most clearly somber facts, yet 
his message concerning society is not that of the 
pessimist. In spite of personal sorrow and social 
disorder, he says : " I will not shut me from my 
kind." ^^ He hears 

A deeper voice across the storm 
Proclaiming social truth shall spread. 
And justice.^'' 

These gloomy facts only impose upon the awak- 
ened and enlightened the greater, more solemn 
obligation to " all live together like brethren." ^^ 
If anyone harms a brother-man, 

"'Act III, pp. 800, 801. 

'" P. 803. 

""In Memoriam," CVIII, p. 278. 

^■Ibid., CXXVII, p. 283. 

*' " Queen Mary," Act IV, sc. 3, 631. 



SOCIETY 121 

Albeit he thinks himself at home with God, 
Of this be sure, he is whole worlds away." 

These luminous words of Cranmer are the words 
of Tennyson. Addressing the rich, he says: 

You that wanton in affluence, 

Spare not now to be bountiful. 

Call your poor to regale with you, 

All the lowly, the destitute, 

Make their neighborhood healthfuller, 

Give your gold to the Hospital 

Let the weary be comforted, 

Let the needy be banqueted, 

Let the maimed in his heart rejoice." 

It was the noble purpose of Akbar 

to fuse his myriads into union under one, 
To hunt the tiger of oppression out 
From office.'^ 

When in town, Tennyson mingled with all 
sorts and conditions of men.^' He appreciated 
their aspirations and their needs. The evidences 
of social unrest were to him solemn facts to be 
diligently studied for the purpose of gaining wis- 
dom for future action. Once, when a member 
of a party made a jocular remark about some 
disorders apprehended or existing in the centers 
of industry, Tennyson solemnly replied : " I 

** " On the Jubilee of Queen Victoria," p. 803. 
™ " Akbar's Dream," p. 881. 
"Memoir, Vol. I, p. 183. 



122 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

can't joke about so grave a question." ^^ When 
visiting with friends, the conversation was often 
upon the social difficulties of the time.^^ He 
read " with great pleasure " an account of the 
German Ragged Schools as indicating one possi- 
ble partial solution of the social problem.^*' His 
words are luminous with hope, for he believed 
in the presence and power of the Christ-spirit in 
the world. He, like his friend J. W. Blakesley, 
saw that the cause of the abuses of the present 
system is the selfish spirit which pervades the 
whole frame of society. He knew that, if the 
effects are to be banished, the cause must be re- 
moved.^^ 

To accomplish so great a work, the Christ, 
" the strong Son of God, Immortal Love," alone 
is sufficient. What he can do is indicated by 
what he has done. When a friend once spoke of 
Christ as an example of failure, he replied : " Do 
you call that failure which has altered the belief 
and the social relations of the whole world ? " ^^ 
He saw this great ideal of the Christ leading indi- 
viduals and the world on to the conquest of the 
selfishness which corrupts and destroys. In 

^Memoir, Vol. I, p. 205. 
''Ibid., p. 468. 
'"Ibid., p. 512. 
"Ibid., p. 69. 
''Ibid., p. 512. 



SOCIETY 123 

" The Voyage " the thought is put in figure, but 
it is his thought none the less : 

But, blind or lame or sick or sound, 
We follow that which flies before ; 

We know the merry world is round, 
And we may sail for evermore." 

The spirit of the Christ flies before, and those 
who follow will leave behind the selfishness 
which degrades, and ever approach the love which 
exalts and purifies and frees the individual and 
the world. 

^ Poems, p. 118. 



CHAPTER VII 

SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS: THE STATE, THE 
CHURCH 

As society comes to self-consciousness, certain 
ideas which are held in common by members of 
the social group find expression in institutions. 
These are of great service in registering the 
thought-progress of a people, and in making 
prominent and efficient the ideas which might 
otherwise lie buried in the minds of men. Insti- 
tutions are the hands with which ideas do their 
work. These are the bodies of which ideas are 
the spirit and life. They deserve reverence be- 
cause of the work they do and the spirit they 
enshrine. They have no power in themselves. 
They are the channels through which ideas flow 
to act upon the world. 

By their very nature institutions are subject to 
change. Truth is constant and unchanging, but 
the individual and social apprehension of truth 
grows and develops. Falsehoods are removed. 
Useless or outworn theories are discarded. An 
institution can express only that part or phase of 
truth which those who create or sustain it have 
124 



SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 125 

apprehended. As the ideas of people grow, the 
form of their expression must change. Likewise, 
as the needs which an institution exists to meet 
vary, there must be a corresponding change in 
that which was created to meet the needs. When 
the idea or the need entirely passes away, the 
institution must decay or be abolished. 

These great social truths Tennyson has ex- 
pressed with clearness and beauty. " Morte 
D'Arthur " has the same meaning essentially as 
the " Passing of Arthur." Arthur, the pure soul 
of man, passes, while the Round Table, with its 
knights and tournaments and quests, the institu- 
tions of men, decay and disappear. In these 
great poems Bedivere represents the conservative 
spirit so in love with the sword Excalibur, a mere 
instrument for the conquest of Arthur's foes, that 
it is exceedingly hard for him to part with it 
even at the command of the king. He looks 
upon its wondrous beauty, thinks of all it has 
wrought through the might of the king, and can- 
not bear to have it lost to the world. After two 
fruitless attempts to hurl it into the sea, as Arthur 
commanded, the third time he succeeds, closing 
his eyes lest the glittering gems should again con- 
quer his purpose to obey the dying king. 

" Sea Dreams " is akin to this in thought. The 
swelling wave represents essential, absolute truth. 
Men in their imaginings have built cathedrals 



126 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

with statues of saints and martyrs. The wave 
swells and destroys these forms, threatening even 
the most sacred images. Arthur passes, but 
comes again in a higher and diviner form. In- 
stitutions fail, and truth passes on in other and 
nobler creations. In general, he teaches that all 
things subject to physical evolution are subject to 
destruction and decay. " De Profundis " is not- 
able among other things, for its expression of 
this thought. This poem is a significant com- 
ment upon " The Idylls." The Round Table, 
and all institutions subject to physical evolution, 
are liable to destruction. The Arthurs are births 
out of the spirit, and pass, to come again in ever 
higher and higher forms. 

I. THE STATE 

One of the great social institutions of which 
Tennyson speaks with special interest and enthu- 
siasm is the state. He has no new or startling 
theory of government to exploit. He does not 
expressly declare his own preference for any de- 
tailed system of government. Rather, as an 
English patriot, he writes of his own state, her 
statesmen, throne, empire, and political problems. 
He may almost be said to take it for granted that 
the English government is the best in the world. 
This would not be exactly true, however ; for his 
loyalty to his own land is not unintelligent. He 



SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 127 

knows what other governments are, and what 
they have accompHshed for their people. He had 
read history with interest and profit. He was a 
careful observer of the poHtical movements of 
his time. Yet, after all his reading and study 
and observation he came back to view his own 
England with renewed satisfaction. He boasts 
of England as the land of settled government, as 
contrasted with France, where 

The gravest citizen seems to lose his head, 

The king is scared, the soldiers will not fight, 

The little boys begin to shoot and stab, 

A kingdom topples over with a shriek 

Like an old woman, and down rolls the world 

In mock heroics stranger than our own ; 

Revolts, republics, revolutions, most 

No graver than a school boys' barring out ; 

Too comic for the solemn things they are, 

Too solemn for the comic touches in them.^ 

In the " Ode on the Death of the Duke of Well- 
ington " these lines occur, referring to the same 
country : 

A people's voice ! We are a people yet, 
Tho' all men else their nobler dreams forget. 
Confused by brainless mobs and lawless Powers.' 

In " The Third of February " he says : 

We love not this French God, the child of Hell, 
Wild War who breaks the converse of the wise.* 

^ " The Princess," p. 217. 
^ Sec. 7, p. 219. 
' P. 221. 



128 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

As one of the " signs of storm " he speaks of 
" Art with poisonous honey stol'n from France." "* 
Equally significant lines occur in " Locksley Hall 
Sixty Years After " : 

France had shown a light to all men, preach'd a Gospel, 

All men's good ; 
Celtic Demos rose a Demon, shriek'd and slaked the 

light with blood." 

Paris was to him " the centre and crater of Euro- 
pean confusion." ® As a young man he spent 
some time in France, but never became an en- 
thusiastic admirer of the French character. He 
said : " I am struck on returning from France 
with the look of good sense in the London peo- 
ple." ^ The reader may draw his own inference 
as to the poet's opinion of the looks of the Pari- 
sians. Tennyson quotes John Kemble's phrase, 
" the moral barbarism of France," as if it were 
worth repeating for the truth it contains, and this 
barbarism was manifested in the affairs of state 
as perhaps nowhere else. 

Emily Tennyson was in Paris in 1848, after 
the revolution against Louis Philippe had begun. 
She was shot at by one of the revolutionists, as 
she was looking out of the window. The bullet 

* " To the Queen," p. 475. 
' P. 562. 

' " Beautiful City," p. 835. 
''Memoir, Vol. I, p. 55. 



SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 129 

missed her, but went through the ceiHng. She 
wrote home an account of these stormy days, and 
this doubtless strengthened Tennyson's aversion 
to the fickle forms of government for which the 
French are famous.^ He was the voice of those 
who regarded France under Napoleon as a seri- 
ous menace to the peace of Europe. But in the 
later years, after the Franco-German War, he 
expressed great admiration for the dignified way 
in which France gradually recovered herself. 
The France that was charmed only by martial 
prowess he could not praise. It was " the wiser 
France " he lauded. Such a nation, he believed, 
would work with England for the good of the 
world and hasten the coming of the universal 
brotherhood.^ 

This reference to France and the French gov- 
ernment is in place here because of the emphasis 
it gives to Tennyson's opinion of what the state 
should not be. He did not, could not, applaud 
" phantoms of other forms of rule " that were 
" vague in vapour, hard to mark." ^^ He be- 
lieved in 

our slowly-grown 
And crown'd Republic's crowning common-sense." 

* Ihid., pp. 272 f. 

*Ibid., pp. 344, 380. 

" " Love Thou Thy Land," p. 65. 

""To the Queen," p. 475. 



130 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

He called England a republic, a " crowned re- 
public," and believed in the saving common-sense 
of her people. Every state may have at times 
weak, corrupt, or inefficient officials. Then it is 
the duty of the ruler to follow the example of 
Arthur, who 

Rooted out the slothful officer 
Or guilty, which for bribe had wink'd at wrong. 
And in their chairs set up a stronger race 
With hearts and hands, and sent a thousand men 
To till the wastes, and moving everywhere 
Clear'd the dark places and let in the law.^' 

The court must be pure and strong, or enemies 
will be triumphant and the land will suffer. The 
sinful, conscience-smitten queen, fleeing to Almes- 
bury from the ruin she had wrought, says : 

For now the heathen of the Northern Sea, 
Lured by the crimes and frailties of the court, 
Begin to slay the folk, and spoil the land." 

The great-hearted king himself realized the cause 
of his downfall and cried : " My house hath 
been my doom ; " though he would not call 
Modred the traitor of his house.^^ The downfall 
of Queen Mary is in part explained by these 
words of Bagenhall : 

" " Geraint and Enid," pp. 368, 369. 

** " Guinevere," p. 458. 

" " The Passing of Arthur," p. 469. 



SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 131 

We have no men among us. The new Lords 

Are quieted with their sop of Abbeylands, 

And ev'n before the Queen's face Gardiner buys 

them 
With Philip's gold. All greed, no faith, no courage." 

Tennyson never believed and never taught 

that lying 
And ruling men are fatal twins that cannot 
Move one without the other,'" 

but rather counseled honesty, purity, and truth 
in ruler and court. The opposite of these are 
among the sins of a nation that are deadlier than 
war.^^ The Idylls of the King are the poet's 
statement of the high aim that every state should 
constantly cherish. These poems show as cer- 
tainly that, when a government fails to accom.- 
plish that purpose which is at the same time po- 
litical and spiritual, it is not primarily because of 
misfortune, or of some attack from without, but 
because of moral evil that overthrows the very 
foundations of the state.^^ One of the highest 
encomiums pronounced upon the queen was that 
" her court was pure." *^ 

It is plain that England's hereditary monarchy 

" " 0"een Mary," Act III, sc. i, p. 605. 

""Harold," Act III, p. 672. 

^''Memoir, Vol. I, p. 401. 

''Ibid., p. 511. 

" " To the Queen," p. i. 



132 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

was the " crowned republic " that the poet com- 
mended. He does not desire a change from a 
hereditary to an elected ruler. He writes " To 
the Queen " : 

May you rule us long, 

And leave us rulers of your blood 

As noble till the latest day ! " 

He sounded the alarm of Tiresias, 

that the tyranny of one 
Was prelude to the tyranny of all. 

He repeated the warning, 

that the tyranny of all 
Led backward to the tyranny of one.^^ 

In " Hands All Round " these lines occur, show- 
ing his desire for a large-minded policy on the 
part of the houses of Parliament, and of the peo- 
ple who gave them power : 

To both our Houses may they see 
Beyond the borough and the shire ! 

We sail'd wherever ship could sail, 
We founded many a mighty state ; 

Pray God our greatness may not fail. 
Thro' craven fears of being great." 

He believed with all his heart in the larger Eng- 
land. He was careful to say that wherever the 

""Loc. cit. 

" " Tiresias," p. 539. 

"P. 5/5. 



SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 133 

British flag went, there were his fellow-citizens, 
his "brethren;" there was an opportunity to 
make men milder by just government.--^ 

Wisdom when in power 

And wisest, should not frown as Power, but smile 
As Kindness, watching all, till the true must 
Shall make her strike as Power.'* 

Traitors are rarely bred 
Save under traitor kings." 

He was ever the herald and advocate of liberty, 
and this involved hatred of a tyrant king or of a 
tyrant majority. Government is but a channel 
through which to convey the people's wishes.-*^ 

Victoria was to him the ideal sovereign of 
English people. What he says of her he says 
with a feeling of loyal affection and of patriotic 
pride. The tributes which he paid to the queen 
were not the servile, mechanical laudations of a 
hired man of the crown. They were the sincere 
expressions of a genuine admirer and loyal sub- 
ject. His loyalty was chivalrous and ardent. 
He believed that 

She wrought her people lasting good ; 
Her court was pure, her life serene ; 
God gave her peace; her land reposed; 

*' " Harold," Act I, so. i, p. 656. 
" Ibid. 

=' " The Foresters," Act II, p. 847. 
^^ Memoir, Vol. I, p. iii. 



134 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

A thousand claims to reverence closed 
In her as Mother, Wife, and Queen ; 
And statesmen at her council met 
Who knew the seasons when to take 
Occasion by the hand, and make 
The bounds of freedom wider yet 
By shaping some august decree, 
Which kept her throne unshaken still. 
Broad-based upon her people's will. 
And compass'd by the inviolate sea." 

There can be no reasonable doubt that such 
tributes helped to make steady the foundation of 
the British throne. He gave expression to the 
loyalty of the common people, that might other- 
wise have been voiceless. 

In various other ways does he portray his ideal 
of the ruler of a realm. Arthur, in a sense, 
stands as the model king, though he failed 
through the treachery and sin of some whom he 
had chosen. The true sovereign will be loved 
by the people. For Victoria he prayed : " The 
love of all thy people comfort thee." ^^ So Ar- 
thur was held in honor and affection by all the 
knights of the round table. Even Mary recog- 
nized *' love as one of the strongest bonds uniting 
ruler and people." ^^ Elizabeth likewise loved 
the people and felt confident of their love for 

""To the Queen," p. i. 

" " Dedication," p. 388. 

"" " Queen Mary," Act II, so. 2, p. 598. 



SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 135 

her.^" The power which a ruler has over those 
whom he loves and governs was thus expressed 
by Robin : 

I believe their lives 

No man who truly loves and truly rules 

His following, but can keep his followers true.'^ 

That such love could be expressed Akbar be- 
lieved. He declared that kings should show a 
warmth of love for all they rule, and give to them 
equal law and deeds that shall be a light to men.^^ 
Arthur, the ideal king, was honored and loved 
by the people as well as by his knights. He uni- 
fied all the petty princedoms and reigned over 
them as one realm.^^ His power was not main- 
tained by the display of riches or of royal sym- 
bols. 

He neither wore on helm or shield 

The golden symbol of his knighthood, 

But rode a simple knight among his knights, 

And many of these in richer arms than he.^ 

He was not motived by a selfish ambition, but 
showed that in spirit he was worthy to rule over 
a people aspiring to 

^Ibid., Act V, sc. 3, p. 646. 

""The Foresters," Act II, sc. i, p. 847. 

^ " Akbar's Dream," p. 880. 

^ " The Coming of Arthur," p. 309. 

'^Ibid. 



136 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

Have power on this dark land to lighten it, 
And power on this dead world to make it live. ^ 

Gareth recognized in him a true king, because 
he w^on freedom for the people. 

Who should be king save him 
Who makes us free ? ^ 

he asks. When one who had hated the king 
came to him for help in her distress, Arthur an- 
swered: 

We sit king, to help the wrong'd 

Thro' all our realm." 

He was never indifferent to the sufferings of 
others, though he did condemn himself 

As one that let foul wrong stagnate and be, 
By having look'd too much thro' alien eyes, 
And wrought too long with delegated hands, 
Not used mine own.^* 

He felt the kingdom had a rightful claim upon 
him and all his possessions. Even the jewels of 
the crown which he had snatched from the tarn 
he declared belonged not to the king, but to the 
kingdom for public use. Hence he decreed that 
that there should be once every year a joust for 
one of these precious diamonds.^^ 

^^ Loc. cit., p. 310. 

" " Gareth and Lynette," p. 319. 

""Ibid., p. 323. 

'^ " Geraint and Enid," p. 363. 

*' " Lancelot and Elaine," p. 396. 



SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 137 

There were some who could not appreciate 
such nobleness as this. Guinevere called him " a 
moral child without the craft to rule." ^'^ He 
did not leave his realm to follow wandering fires, 
knowing — 

That the king must guard 
That which he rules, and is but as the hind 
To whom a space of land is given to plow. 
Who may not wander from the allotted field 
Before his work be done ; but being done, 
Let visions of the night or of the day 
Come, as they wilh " 

The ruler and his people become really one 
through their loyal love the one for the other, as 
husband and wife are one In the bonds of wedded 
love. It is Arthur, the ideal king, who says : 

The king who fights his people, fights himself. 

And they my knights, who loved me once, the stroke 

That strikes them dead is as my death to me.*^ 

Queen Mary knew enough of what should be to 
talk of loving her people and being loved by 
them. But this love was to her a name rather 
than a reality. She defied her council, her peo- 
ple, her parliament, in order to carry out a cher- 
ished plan of her own.^^ 

Freedom loathes such a lawless ruler even as 

*°Ibid., p. 398. 

*^ " The Holy Grail," p. 433. 
*^"The Passing of Arthur," p. 468. 
*^ " Queen Mary," Act I, sc. 5, p. 588. 



138 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

she loathes a lawless crowd. ^^ It may be true 
that 

To sit high 

Is to be lied about," 

but it is the duty of the ruler to see that the truth 
commends his action toward his people. Wil- 
liam the Conqueror promised to rule the domain 
upon which he was soon to enter according to the 
laws of the land, and make the 

ever-jarring Earldoms move 
To music and in order.** 

Henry II, who sought to compel Becket to sign 
the ancient laws and customs of the realm, was 
a lawless king, who represented the tyrant's 
power without a kingly love for his subjects.^^ 
Such a despot cannot feel with the free.'*^ These 
abusers of royal power, as they are portrayed 
in the lines of Tennyson, really add luster to the 
name of Arthur, the ideal king, to whom the poet 
dared to compare Albert, the prince consort, and 
Victoria, the feminine counterpart of the mighty 
head of the table round. 

The noblest men methinks are bred 
Of ours, the Saxo-Norman race, 

" " Freedom," p. 576. 

" " Queen Mary," Act I, sc. 5, p. 592. 

""Harold," Act II, sc. 2, pp. 670, 692. 

*' " Becket," Act I, sc. 3, p. 704. 

** " Riflemen Form," p. 890. 



SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 139 

And in the world the noblest place, 
Madam, is yours, our queen and head.*" 

What has already been said shows that in gov- 
ernment the statesman stands next to the ruler. 
One evidence of the wisdom of a monarch is 
his choice of wise counselors. The Duke of Wel- 
lington is praised by the poet as a statesman as 
well as a warrior. He is commended as mod- 
erate, resolute, unselfish, wise, simple, rich in 
saving common-sense.^" He was not of the 
number of those who betray their party secret 
to the press.^^ Prince Albert was another noble 
and able statesman who never made " his high 
place the lawless perch of wing'd ambitions, nor 
a vantage ground for pleasure." ^^ He labored 
for the people, especially for the poor, and sum- 
moned war and waste " to fruitful strifes and 
rivalries of peace." ^^ The lines " To the Duke 
of Argyll " ^* give a fairly complete picture of 
what the statesman should be. These declare in 
poetic form what could not be made clearer by the 
most prosaic analysis : 

" Memoir, Vol. I, " Dedication ; " an unpublished version 
of "To the Queen," 1851. 
'^ Poems, p. 220. 
" " Maud." V, 3, p. 305. 
" " Dedication of Idylls," p. 308. 
'^ Ibid. 
"P. 575- 



140 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

O Patriot Statesman, be thou wise to know 
The limits of resistance, and the bounds 
Determining concession ; still be bold 
Not only to slight praise but suffer scorn ; 
And be thy heart a fortress to maintain 
The day against the moment, and the year 
Against the day; thy voice, a music heard 
Thro' all the yells and counter yells of feud 
And faction, and thy will, a power to make 
This ever-changing world of circumstance, 
In changing chime with never-changing Law. 

Such a statesman will be a " true leader of the 
land's desires." ^^ He will not " jeer and fleer 
at men," thus making enemies for himself and for 
the king.^^ He will take " Truth herself for 
model," ^'^ though he be familiar with the old say- 
ing: 

That were a man of state nakedly true. 

Men would but take him for the craftier liar."*" 

Such a man will be the confidant of the king, 
for 

State secrets should be patent to the statesman 

Who serves and loves his king."' 

He once said of Blakesley : " He ought to be 
Lord Chancellor, for he is a subtle and powerful 

'"^ " Hands All Round," p. 575. 

"" " Queen Mary," Act II, sc. 2, p. 601. 

"Ibid., Act III, sc. 3, p. 612. 

°' " Harold," Act III, sc. i, p. 672. 

^' " Becket," Prologue," p. 694. 



SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 141 

reasoner, and an honest man." ^^ As early as 
1833 he cursed " O'Connell for as double-dyed a 
rascal as ever was dipped in the Styx of politi- 
cal villainy." but his son informs us that he soft- 
ened this opinion when he came to know more 
about the Irish statesman.^^ 

He believed that a poet, while ardently loving- 
his own country, should write of what is noble 
and great in the history of all countries. His 
utterances should be outspoken, yet statesman- 
like and without narrow partisanship.^^ ^g ^^ 
illustration of what he conceived such an utter- 
ance should be, it is worth while to quote a few 
lines from an unpublished poem of the 1831-33 
period : 

For where is he, the citizen, 
Deep-hearted, moderate, firm, who sees 
His path before him? Not with these, 
Shadows of statesmen, clever men ! 

Uncertain of ourselves we chase 
The clap of hands, we jar like boys: 
And in the hurry and the noise 
Great spirits grow akin to base. 



Ill fares a people passion-wrought, 
A land of many days that cleaves 



"' Memoir, Vol. I, p. 38. 
" Ibid., p. loi. 
''Ibid., pp. 209, 210. 



142 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

In two great halves, when each one leaves 
The middle road of sober thought. 

Not he that breaks the dams, but he 
That thro' the channels of the state 
Convoys the people's wish, is great; 
His name is pure, his fame is free ; 

He cares, if ancient usage fade, 
To shape, to settle, to repair, 
With seasonable changes fair. 
And innovation grade by grade: 

Or, if the sense of most require 

A precedent of larger scope. 

Not deals in threats, but works with hope, 

And lights at length on his desire. 

Knowing those laws are just alone 
That contemplate a mighty plan, 
The frame, the mind, the soul of man, 
Like one that cultivates his own. 

He seeing far an end sublime. 
Contends, despising party-rage, 
To hold the Spirit of the Age 
Against the Spirit of the Time.*^ 

One important means by which government 
seeks to accompHsh its beneficent purpose for so- 
ciety is law. This thought is really related to 
the poet's conception of evolution. He believed 

''^Memoir, Vol. I, pp. no, in. 



SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 143 

that bodies develop in accordance with a law 
which is within themselves. This law cannot 
be annihilated by human intelligence, but may be 
concretely stated by one who has gained a knowl- 
edge of its operations. It is the part of the indi- 
vidual to give ready obedience to that law which 
is within himself and which may be stated in 
scientific language. The social body has laws 
of its own which are within itself, and all its 
development takes place in accordance with these 
internal principles. It is the work of the states- 
man and the legislator to learn what these laws 
are and give to them worthy expression. It is 
the part of the public servant to demand obedi- 
ence to these, and the part of the individual to 
render the obedience demanded. Then the nor- 
mal, the practical idea of " ruling " is " by obey- 
ing nature's powers." ^* Law is universal. 
There is and can be no exception. " Nothing is 
that errs from law." ^^ This is not to be be- 
wailed as a calamity. It is our wisdom 

To live by law, 

Acting the law we live by without fear."' 

Anyone who has eyes to see may see 

The hollow orb of moving circumstance 
Roird round by one fix'd law." 

'* " International Exhibition Ode," p. 223. 

«' " In Memoriam," LXXIII, p. 265. 

"* " y^none," p. 42. 

" " The Palace of Art," p. 48. 



144 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TEXXYSOX 

The Princess declares, with a wisdom greater 

than she knows : 

All things serve their time 
Toward that great year of equal mights and rights, 
Xor would I fight with iron laws, in the end 
Found golden/" 

With man as he is, it is not sufficient merely to 
" hold by the law within.*' ^^ That law must have 
external expression, and must be obeyed if it is 
to be efficient in securing the development of the 
individual and of society. The wise man will 
discern the proper time in which to express that 
inner principle in human legislation. *' and in its 
season bring the law." ~^ 

Our knowledge of these inner and external 
laws, written in the very constitution of man and 
of society, is of course imperfect. Consequently, 
our expression of them can only be partial and 
incomplete. This may lead either to an overes- 
timate or an underestimate of law. 

God is law, say the wise ; O Soul, and let us rejoice. 
For if he thunder by law the thunder is yet his voice. 
Law is God, say some ; no God at all, says the fool ; 
For all we have power to see is a straight staff bent 
in a pool.'^ 

•^ " The Princess, p. 187. 

" " In Memoriam," XXXIII, p. 256. 

''° Poems, p. 65. 

" " The Higher Pantheism," p. 239. 



SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 145 

The imperfection of our knowledge of the eternal 
laws which it is the business of the statesman to 
discover and embody in statute is not at all 
to be wondered at. Progress, evolution, is the 
method here as everywhere. As we find errors 
in the legislation of the past, these can be cor- 
rected, and the new truth discerned can be incor- 
porated into other laws. This should teach us 

Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made, 
Some patient force to change them when we will." 

When the laws are broken with impunity, the 
doom of the realm is sealed. The breaking of 
the laws of the Tournament, without a word 
from the great umpire, proclaimed the real de- 
struction and decay of the Round Table.'-'^ A 
lawless realm is a broken realm. There the 
wrongs of the weak and defenseless go un- 
avenged.'^ If the laws are cruel, they should 
be changed until they are just."^^ If to some 
who have suffered it seems that " the lawyer is 
born but to murder," '^^ that 

often justice drowns 
Between the law and letter of the law," 

'^ " The Princess," p. 216. 

""The Last Tournament," p. 446. 

'* " Geraint and Enid," p. 362. 

" " Becket," Act V, sc. 2, p. 741. 

■' " Rizpah," p. 503. 

^ " The Foresters," Act IV, sc. i, p. 866. ^ 



146 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

it is to be remembered that these are defects in 
" the lawless science of our law " '^^ and in admin- 
istration. These are defects that may be removed 
in time. England's government already stands 
for justice, not for hollow form. The justiciary 
in " The Foresters " says : 

If the king 

Condemn us without trial, men will call him 

An Eastern tyrant, not an English king." 

Government in England, the poet believes, stands 
for justice, for " equal law for all." ^^ This con- 
dition in the poet's land is prophetic of the time 
when 

The common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm 

in Awe, 
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal 

law." 

This conception of law in government ex- 
pressly provides for changes that are in the na- 
ture of innovations. He believed that the new 
in government should be so joined with the old 
as to make one system. Progress to him did not 
mean a break with the past, but simply an ad- 
vance. 

" " Aylmer's Field," p. 149. 
'• Act IV, so. I, p. 870. 
'""Akbar's Dream," p. 880. 
" " Locksley Hall," p. loi. 



SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 147 

So let the change which comes be free 
To ingroove itself with that which flies, 
And work, a joint of state, that plies 
Its office, moved with sympathy. 

Of many changes, aptly joined, 
Is bodied forth the second whole. 
Regard gradation, lest the soul 
Of Discord race the rising wind. 

Tomorrow yet would reap today. 
As we bear blossom of the dead ; 
Earn well the thrifty months, nor wed 
Raw Haste, half sister to Delay.*' 

A similar expression of this same opinion occurs 
in " The Statesman," a part of which has been 
already quoted. 

He cares, if ancient usage fade, 
To shape, to settle, to repair. 
With seasonable changes fair. 
And innovation grade by grade.*^ 

Arthur recognized that changes are needful to 
the progress of the world, and said : 

The old order changeth, yielding place to new. 

And God fulfils himself in many ways, 

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world." 

The same great truth is taught by " Freedom " : 

*^"Love Thou Thy Land," pp. 65, 66. 

*^ Memoir, Vol. I, p. iii. 

** " The Passing of Arthur," p. 473. 



148 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

Who yet, like Nature, wouldst not mar 
By changes all too fierce and fast 
This order of Her Human Star 
This heritage of the past/^ 

Innovations in government and society are to be 
expected and desired. These, however, should 
be vitally related to the past, and should pre- 
pare the way for a higher form of individual and 
associated life in the future. 

In every government there are some who stand 
as advocates of innovation, and some who op- 
pose the new and cling tenaciously to the old. 
This has naturally resulted in the formation of 
parties. Parties have been subdivided into fac- 
tions, actuated by selfish motives and seeking, 
not the good of the state, but the accomplishment 
of unworthy ends. Tennyson calls the members 
of these cliques " dogs of Faction." ^^ He gave 
high praise to Prince Albert as one " not sway- 
ing to this faction or to that." ^^ Similar com- 
mendation is given to the Duke of Argyll, whose 
voice was 

a music heard 

Through all the yells and counter yells of feud 

And faction.*" 

'' P. 576. 

'^ Poems, p. 66. 

" " Dedication of Idylls," p. 308. 

*' " To the Duke of Argyll," p. 575. 



SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 149 

Such factions are inevitably dangerous to the 
state, for they seek, not the good of the many, 
but the selfish aggrandizement of the few. 
True freedom is a 

Scorner of the party cry, 

That wanders from the public good." 

" Locksley Hall Sixty Years After " contains one 
line that gives special emphasis to the danger 
from this source: 

Nay, but these would feel and follow Truth, if only 

you and you. 
Rivals of realm-ruining party, when you speak were 

wholly true.°° 

Tennyson loved Freedom for her own sake and 
was, " wed to no faction in the state." ^^ More 
than that, he was of the number of those " who 
loathed parties and sects," ^^ like the statesman 
he describes, " despising party-rage," ^^ He be- 
lieved that, if there were more of a partiotic and 
less of a party spirit in the press, the Chartist 
and socialist agitation could be more easily met; 
so ^■^ he cries in the unpublished poem " Jack 
Tar " : " the d— 1 take the parties." ^^ 

'° " Freedom," p. 576. 

•"P. 563. 

*^ Memoir, Vol. I, p. 41. 

»' Ibid., p. 42. 

''Ibid., p. III. 

'*Ibid., p. 185. 

''^Ibid.,p. 437. 



150 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

One of the great perils of factional agitations 
is that these may lead to the violence of revolt 
or revolution. The history of the French people 
reveals the unfortunate results of such disturb- 
ances of the social order. What has already been 
said concerning France is sufficient to show the 
poet's attitude toward what is distinctive in the 
government of that country. He called Bona- 
parte " madman," ^® and in " Aylmer's Field " 
he speaks of " that cursed France with her egali- 
ties." ^"^ There was a time when there were 
many who, like Wordsworth, " had golden hopes 
for France and all mankind ; " ^^ but Tennyson 
was always suspicious of the permanence of a 
progress attained by such means as the French 
people employed. As early as 1842 he asked: 

O shall the braggart shout, 
For some blind glimpse of freedom work itself, 
Thro' madness, hated by the wise, to law. 
System and empire ? " 

Those who had cherished the " golden hopes for 
France " were doomed to bitter disappointment. 
This was the keener because of the great promise 
of light which the earlier days had given : 

°" " Buonaparte," p. 25. 

""P. 146. 

^* Ibid., p. 149. 

'* " Love and Duty," ■^ 92. 



SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 151 

France had shown a light to all men, preach'd a Gospel, 

All men's good ; 
Celtic Demos rose a Demon, shriek'd and slaked the 

light with blood/~ 

This brings chaos, confusion, and disaster, in 
which is " freedom, free to slay herself, and dy- 
ing while they shout her name." ^°^ Liberty and 
progress are not honored, they are destroyed, by 
such defiance of the past and of the great laws of 
social development. The wise man will 

maintain 
The day against the moment, and the year 
Against the day,^"" 

not " expecting all things in an hour." ^^^ 

When tyrants are in power, abuses are suf- 
fered, but such revolutions as France has known 
are likely only to add new and even greater ca- 
lamities. In the lines entitled " Beautiful 
City," he says : 

Beautiful city, the centre and crater of European 

confusion, 
O you with your passionate shriek for the rights of an 

equal humanity, 
How often your Re-volution has proven but E-voIution 

"*"Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," p. 562. 
'"' Ibid., p. 563. 

"' " To the Duke of Argyll," p. 575. 
'""'Freedom," X, p. 576. 



152 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

RoU'd again back on itself in the tides of a civic 
insanity."* 

This is one of the poems corroborative of the 
statement of the younger Tennyson concerning 
his illustrious father : " Indeed from first to last 
he always preached the onward progress of 
liberty, while steadily opposed to revolutionary 
license." ^^^ He and Hallam started for the Pyr- 
enees with money for the insurgent allies of Tor- 
rijos, a noble, accomplished, truthful leader, who 
raised the standard of revolt against the Inquisi- 
tion and the tyranny of Ferdinand, king of Spain. 
This bit of practice was entirely in accord with 
his preaching. He hated tyranny and oppres- 
sion; he loved liberty and right. Liberty once 
gained, however, he believed should be main- 
tained, and innovations should be introduced 
" grade by grade." 

II. THE CHURCH 

Tennyson looked upon the church as one of 
the great institutions of organized society. He 
studied it with care and sympathy, and wrote of 
it with wisdom and power. He believed that 
the church exists to meet a real social need, and 
that its maintenance is a civic and patriotic duty. 
The fundamental fact upon which the church is 
based, and which makes it a permanent necessity, 

"' P. 835. 

^°'^ Memoir, Vol. I, p. 42. 



SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 153 

is " an Omnipotent, Omni-present and All-loving 
God, who has revealed himself throng-h the hu- 
man attribute of the highest self-sacrificing 
love." i»« In all the affairs of life, " there is a 
hand that guides." ^^^ 

Closer is He than breathing, 
And nearer than hands and feet."* 
His are 

the hands 
That reach through nature, moulding men.'"* 

In all of the sufferings of the individual, in all 
of the bewilderments of the world,^ in all of the 
struggles of class against class in human society, 
in all the jealousies and wars between nations, 
the individual should comfort himself with the 
thought : " I have not made the world, and He 
that made it will guide." ^^ There are times 
of darkness and of seeming failure, when even 
the noble Arthur says : 

I found Him in the shining of the stars, 
I marked Him in the flowering of His fields, 
But in His ways with men, I find Him not."* 

Yet, in the same breath he suggests an explana- 
''^Ibid., p. 311. 

lOT u 'pj^g Princess," p. 217. 

'"' " The Higher Pantheism," p. 239. 

"" " In Memoriam," CXXIV, p. 283. 

"" " Maud," IV, 8, p. 290. 

'" " The Passing of Arthur," p. 467. 



154 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

tion of this seeming absence of God from " the 
ways of men " : 

These eyes of men are dense and dim, 
And have not power to see it as it is. 

With unfailing faith he declares, I shall 

learn that Love which is, and was 
My Father and my Brother and my God."* 

Confident of this future knowledge, he says in 
his lines " On the Jubilee of Queen Victoria " : 

Are there thunders moaning in the distance? 
Are there spectres moving in the darkness? 
Trust, the Hand of Light, will lead her people, 
Till the thunders pass, the spectres vanish, 
And the Light is Victor, and the darkness 
Dawns into the Jubilee of the Ages."* 

If God is in the world as a God of wisdom 
and of love, guiding the affairs of men, and giv- 
ing to all his two great commandments of love 
to God and love to brother-men, religion, or the 
recognition of God as an object of worship, love, 
and obedience, is a perfectly natural phenomenon 
in human society. When men have false ideas 
of the character of God and of his requirements, 
superstitions and wrong systems of worship arise. 
The search for the Holy Grail by the Knights of 
the Round Table degenerated into asceticism and 

'" " Doubt and Prayer," p. 891. 
"' Pp. 805, 806. 



SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 155 

a religion of sense. Arthur found service in 
fields near at hand. Galahad, by purity and self- 
sacrifice, was able to gain a sight of the Holy 
Grail. The service rendered by Arthur and that 
by Galahad were not essentially dififerent. Enoch 
Arden would have died of solitude, 

had not his poor heart 
Spoken with That, which being everywhere. 
Lets none who speaks with Him seem all alone.*" 

Edith, in " Aylmer's Field," is described as one, 
Not sowing hedgerow texts and passing by, 
Nor dealing goodly counsel from a height 
That makes the lowest hate it, but a voice 
Of comfort and an open hand of help, 
A splendid presence flattering the poor roofs. 
Revered as theirs, but kindlier than themselves 
To ailing wife or wailing infancy 
Or old bedridden palsy."" 

King Arthur said to his knights : 

This chance of noble deeds will come and go 
Unchallenged, while ye follow wandering fires, 
Lost in the quagmire."' 

When the Holy Grail actually appeared upon a 
beam of light, 

Every knight beheld his fellow's face, 
As in a glory."' 

"* " Enoch Arden," p. 134. 
"'P. 145. 

"'"The Holy Grail," p. 423. 
'"Ibid., p. 421. 



156 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

It is the practical idea of religion which is also 
embodied in the words of " The Village Wife" : 

But I beant that sewer es the Lord, howsiver they 

praay'd an' praay'd, 
Lets them inter 'eaven easy es leaves their debts do be 

paaid."' 

The poem " Despair " was based upon the fol- 
lowing incident, which appealed strongly to the 
poet. Loss of faith in God and immortality 
caused a man and his wife, who were utterly 
miserable in this life, to resolve to end themselves 
by drowning. The woman was drowned, but the 
man was rescued by a minister of the sect he had 
abandoned. The poem expresses the despair of 
a soul from whom faith in God has departed. 
Dora, in " The Promise of May," quotes her 
mother as saying that 

a soul with no religion — 
Was without rudder, anchor, compass — might be, 
Blown everyway with every gust and wreck 
On any rock."' 

In the notes to " Akbar's Dream " '^^^ Tennyson 
speaks thus of the great Mogul Emperor Akbar : 
" His tolerance of religions and his abhorrence 
of religious persecution put our Tudors to shame. 

"' P. 516. 

"'Act III, p. 800. 

'=~ P. 882. 



SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 157 

He invented a new eclectic religion by which he 
hoped to unite all creeds, castes and peoples; 
and his legislation was remarkable for vigour, 
justice and humanity." Tennyson exalted the re- 
ligion of tolerance, of unselfish service, and of 
brotherly love. He spoke of the follies of for- 
malism and ritualism only to ridicule and con- 
demn them. It was the truth in religion that he 
sought and exalted and proclaimed. That he 
was a close and careful student of the Bible, his 
waitings abundantly attest. Yet he was more 
than this. He recognized that there are great 
and fundamental truths which underlie all re- 
ligions, and these he sought and studied with 
special interest. As a result of all his thought 
and investigations, he declared his agreement with 
Maurice that " all religions seemed to him to be 
imperfect manifestations of the true Christian- 
ity." 121 

Of Christianity he said : " It is rugging at 
my heart." ^^^ It would be difficult to find any- 
one in all modern literature who has grasped 
more firmly and expressed more clearly the con- 
viction that " Christianity is Christ," than has 
Alfred Tennyson. He believed in the power of 
the creed that Christ lived. 

'"' Memoir, Vol. I, p. 431. 
"- Ibid., p. 264. 



158 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

And so the word had breath, and wrought 
With human hands the creed of creeds 
In lovehness of perfect deeds, 
More strong than all poetic thought.'"' 

Throughout his life he read with unfailing in- 
terest " the teaching of Christ, that purest light 
of God." 124 He believed that the greatest and 
best work of the world had been accomplished 
under the inspiration of his life and teaching. 
The nurse " In the Children's Hospital " says : 

O how could I serve in the wards, if the hope of the 

world were a lie? 
How could I bear with the sights and the loathsome 

smells of disease, 
But that He said, " ye do it to me, when ye do it to 

these ? " '^ 

When Telemachus flung himself into the arena 
and stood between the gladiatorial swords, he 
called : 

Forbear, in the great name of him who died for 
men, 

Christ Jesus ! "' 

On one occasion, before referred to, when a 
friend spoke of Christ as an example of failure, 
the poet replied : " Do you call that failure 
which has altered the belief and the social rela- 

"'"In Memoriam," XXXVI, p. 257. 
^'* Memoir, Vol. I, p. 169. 

"'P. 517. 

'^ " St. Telemachus," p. 878. 



SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 159 

tions of the whole world? " ^"" He realized that 
the true Christ is now only very imperfectly un- 
derstood, and his teaching and life very imper- 
fectly followed. He looked for a more complete 
knowledge of him and a more perfect society, as 
he becomes an increasing power in the world. 
He cried over and over again : " Ring in the 
Christ that is to be." ^^^ One of his purposes in 
this line, he said, is to herald the time when 
Christianity without bigotry will triumph, when 
the controversies of creeds shall have vanished, 
and 

Shall bear false witness each of each no more 
But find their limits by that larger light, 
And overstep them, moving easily 
Thro' after-ages in the love of Truth, 
The truth of Love.''' 

This is Arthur come again to earth, and wel- 
comed by all the people, who cry : 

Come, — 
With all good things, and war shall be no more."" 

Then he adds these significant closing words : 

At this a hundred bells began to peal. 

That with the sound I woke, and heard indeed. 

The clear church bells ring in the Christmas-morn.*'* 

^'^ Memoir, Vol. I, p. 512. 

'-' " In Memoriam," CVI, p. 278. 

^-"Memoir, Vol. I, p. 326. 

"" " Morte D'Arthur," p. 72. 

'" Ibid. 



i6o SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

Of the details of church organization and gov- 
ernment the poet, of course, does not treat. He 
sets forth the character and work of the church 
in poetic figure, gives a dramatic presentation of 
her conflict with the state, speaks plainly of the 
abuses practiced by her representatives and by 
institutions within her pale, and holds up the 
great ideal which the church exists to realize. 
The most significant and most beautiful picture 
of the church is that embodied in " The Lady of 
the Lake": ^32 

And near him stood the Lady of the Lake, 
Who knows a subtler magic than his own — 
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful. 
She gave the king his huge cross-hilted sword, 
Whereby to drive the heathen out : a mist 
Of incense curl'd about her, and her face 
Well nigh was hidden in the minster gloom; 
But there was heard among the holy hymns, 
A voice as of the waters, for she dwells 
Down in a deep ; calm, whatsoever storms 
May shake the world, and when the surface rolls, 
Has power to walk the waters like our Lord."' 

Though her forms are ever changing, her great 
arms are outstretched with a constancy and might 
that cannot be broken. In '' Gareth and Ly- 

"'"' Coming of Arthur," p. 313. 

'"See also Stopford Brooke, Tennyson: His Art and 
Relation to Modern Life, pp. 260, 272. 



SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS i6i 

nette," the poet says further of the Lady of 

the Lake : 

All her dress 
Wept from her sides as water flowing away; 
But like the cross her great and goodly arms 
Stretch'd under all the cornice and upheld; 
And drops of water fell from either hand ; 
And down from one a sword was hung, from one 
A censer, either worn with wind and storm ; 
And o'er her breast floated the sacred fish; 
.... and over all, 
High on the top, were those three queens, the friends 
Of Arthur, who should help him at his need.^" 

The different parts of this picture have been thus 
interpreted in their relation to the church : 

The sword is the symbol of her justice, the censer 
is the symbol of her adoration, and both bear the 
marks of time and strife. The drops that fall from 
her hands are the water of baptism, and the fish is the 
ancient sign of the name of Christ. The three queens 
who sit up aloft are the theological virtues of Faith, 
Hope and Charity."' 

The corruptions and abuses of the church are 
portrayed with entire frankness and with dramatic 
power. He speaks of the time 

when the monk was fat, 
And, issuing shorn and sleek, 
Would twist his girdle tight, and pat 
The girls upon the cheek."' 

"*P. 321. 

"* H. Van Dyke, The Poetry of Tennyson, pp. 173, 174. 

"• " The Talking Oak," p. ^, 



i62 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

Balin, after his encounter with Sir Garlon, en- 
tered the chapel of King Pellam. " in which he 
scarce could spy the Christ for Saints." ^^'^ In 
*' Sir John Oldcastle " these lines occur : 

The mitre-sanctioned harlot draws his clerks 
Into the suburb — their hard celibacy, 
Sworn to be veriest ice of pureness, molten 
Into adulterous living, or such crimes 
As holy Paul — a shame to speak of them 
Among the heathen — 

Sanctuary granted 
To bandit, thief, assassin — yea to him 
Who hacks his mother's throat — denied to him 
Who finds the Savior in his mother-tongue."' 

In the same vein he continues : 

[I] rail'd at all the Popes, that ever since 
Sylvester shed the venom of world-wealth 
Into the church, had only prov'n themselves 
Poisoners, murderers."' 

Columbus laments that in his great projects he 
was beaten back chiefly by the church,^ ^"^ to which 
he had always been true.^^^ Cardinal Pole, in 
the drama of " Queen Mary," speaks thus of the 
English church : 

'" " Balin and Balan," p. 376. 

"'P. 523. 

"" P. 524. 

"" " Columbus," pp. 525, 526. 

'"P. .S26. 



SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 163 

She seethed with such adulteries, and the hves 
Of many among your churchmen were so foul 
That heaven wept and earth blush'd.'*^ 

Cranmer inveighs 

Against the huge corruptions of the church, 
Monsters of mistradition."" 

The dying King Edward says of priests and 
churches : 

Your Priests 
Gross, wordly, simoniacal, unlearned ! 
They scarce can read their Psalter; and your churches 
Uncouth, unhandsome, while in Norman-land, 
God speaks thro' abler voices, as He dwells 
In statelier shrines.^" 

Becket declares: 

This Almoner hath tasted Henry's gold, 
The Cardinals have fingered Henry's gold, 
And Rome is venal ev'n to rottenness.'" 

Henry speaks of the " thread-bare-worn quar- 
rel of Crown and Church." ^^^ Walter Map 
says, in graphic language: "If you boxed the 
Pope's ears with a purse, you might stagger him, 
but he would pocket the purse." ^^^ Robin 

"- Act III, sc. 4, p. 617. 
''Ubid., Act IV, sc. 2, p. 628. 
'""Harold," Act I, sc. i, p. 654. 
"° " Becket," Act I, sc. 3, p. 707. 
^*^ Ibid., Act II, sc. 2, p. 719. 
"' Ibid., p 723. 



i64 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

speaks these words of condemnation to the 

Friars : 

one of you 
Shamed a too trustful widow whom you heard 
In her confession ; and another worse ! 
An innocent maid."* 

In a letter to his aunt, written in 1832, the poet 
expresses his fear of the influence of the St. 
Simonists in the church. 

On the other hand, he has much to say of the 
good wrought by the church as a whole, and by 
individuals therein. He extends " To the Rev. 
F. D. Maurice " a most hearty invitation to come 
to his home, commending him as 

Being of that honest few. 
Who give the Fiend himself his due, 
Should eighty thousand College councils. 
Thunder Anathema, friend, at you."* 

Says Becket : 

The people know their church a tower of strength, 
A bulwark against Throne and Baronage.^^" 
The Church is ever at variance with the kings, 
And ever at one with the poor."* 

Perhaps as high commendation as the church 
receives in any single sentence is that contained 
in the emphatic utterance of the tyrant Henry : 

"' " The Foresters," Act III, sc. i, p. 860. 

""Poems, p. 234. 

"""Becket," Act I, sc. i, p. 699. 

^^^ Ibid., sc. 4, p. 713. 



SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 165 

" I would the church were down in hell." ^^^ 
Such words from such a man can be considered 
only as the highest eulogy. In the " Promise of 
May " it was a Sister of Mercy, who had just 
come from the deathbed of a pauper, who took 
the unfortunate Eva to her home and cared for 
her with tenderness and love. The outlaw Robin 
recognized the poor priests as deserving to be 
spared by his followers, " who spoiled the prior, 
friar, abbot and monk." ^^^ 

The pessimist in " Maud " declares that 

The churchmen fain would kill their church, 
As the churches have killed their Christ;'" 

but the poet believes that the church is being led 
by the " hand that guides " to higher ideals and 
greater achievements. In " In Memoriam " it is 
the church bells upon which Tennyson calls to 
" ring out the darkness of the land." It was 
" upon the shrine " that Galahad saw the Holy 
Grail descend. ^^^ The gleam, 

Touch'd at the golden 
Cross of the churches, 

signifying that these are called to, " follow it, 
follow the gleam." ^^^ 

^^'Ibid., Act V, so. I, p. 739- 

''^"The Foresters," Act III, sc. i, p. 857. 

^^ Poems, p. 305. 

"= " The Holy Grail," p. 426. 

"'"Merlin and the Gleam," pp. 830, 831. 



i66 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

Tennyson not only believed in the church as an 
institution; he believed specifically in the estab- 
lished church and openly opposed disestablish- 
ment. In a letter to Mr. Bosworth Smith, vi^rit- 
ten in 1885, he says: " With you, I believe that 
the disestablishment and disendowment of the 
church, would prelude the downfall of much that 
is greatest and best in England. Abuses there 
are no doubt in the church, as elsewhere; but, 
these are not past remedy." ^^"^ He was in hearty 
sympathy with such men as Maurice and Kings- 
ley, who were striving to make thought more tol- 
erant, and to impress upon all men the obliga- 
tions of brotherhood. He favored changing 
" the spirit of the National Church by broaden- 
ing its borders and deepening its spirituality," 
and he himself aided in bringing about this 
change.^^^ 

In these days of prolonged and earnest dis- 
cussion concerning dogma and creed, it would be 
of interest to know just what Tennyson would 
have included in a statement of his own belief. 
But he steadily refused to formulate his creed, 
saying that people would not understand him if 
he did. If he had made the statement, we should 
have endeavored to understand him. As it is, 
we must be content with his own declaration 

^" Reznew of Reineivs, December, 1892, p. 562. 
^^ Memoir, Vol. I, p. 187. 



SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 167 

that his poems express the principles at the 
foundation of his faith. ^^'^ The goal to be sought 
is the union of thought with fact. ^^'^ He hoped 
and believed that " the cramping creeds that had 
madden'd the people would vanish at last." ^^^ 
He honored men of the spirit of Akbar, who 
hated the rancor of castes and creeds, and wished 
to let men worship as they will.^^^ He knew 
that all human creeds are " lower than the heart's 
desire." ^^^ " All the faiths of this grown world 
of ours " seemed to him to be too narrow. ^^^ 
He sympathized with those sincere souls who, in 
time of change and discovery and dispute, 

Have hardly known what to believe, or whether, 
They should believe in anything; the currents 
So shift and change, they see not how they are borne. 
Nor whither.'"'' 

He believed that Christ 

wrought. 
With human hands the creed of creeds. 
In loveliness of perfect deeds.'"" 

The nobility and beauty of a creed of deeds he 

"^ Ibid., pp. 308, 309. 

^"^ Poems, p. 65. 

'"' " Despair," p. 545. 

"'"Akbar's Dream," p. 879. 

"" " Faith," p. 892. 

"" " Harold," Act III, so. 2, p. 675. 

'"' " Queen Mary," Act IV, sc. 3, p. 634. 

"" " In Memoriam," XXXVI, p. 257. 



i68 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

was always glad to portray. He did not accept 
every ancient religious tradition himself, and did 
not ask anyone else to do this. He declared : 

There lives more faith in honest doubt. 
Believe me, than in half the creeds.'" 

Such men as Maurice and Robertson believed 
that ** In Memoriam " made a definite gain in the 
work of the reconciliation of religious philosophy 
with the progressive science of the day. They 
went farther than this and declared that he was 
the one poet who had really made an effective 
stand " on behalf of those first principles which 
underlie all creeds, which belong to our earliest 
childhood and on which the wisest and best have 
rested through all ages; that all is right; that 
darkness shall be clear; that God and Time are 
the only interpreters; that Love is King; that the 
Immortal is in us ; that, which is the key-note of 
the whole, * All is well, tho' Faith and Form be 
sundered in the night of fear.' " ^^^ 

He believed in the freedom of the will with 
intensity of conviction. As a boy he happened 
upon the Calvinist creed. This led him to say: 
" However unfathomable the mystery, if one 
cannot believe in the freedom of the human will 
as of the Divine, life is hardly worth having." ^^® 

"' Ibid., XCVI, p. 274 
^^^ Memoir, Vol. I, p. 298. 
"'/?nU. p. 317- 



SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 169 

He recognized the promise in the work of Alex- 
ander Smith, but declared that he would have to 
learn a different creed from that in the line : 
" Fame, fame, thou are next to God." " Next 
to God," he repeated, " ' next to the Devil,' say I. 
Fame might be worth having, if it helped us to 
do good to a single mortal, but what is it ? Only 
the pleasure of having one's self talked of up and 
down the street." ^^^ 

He contended for " the larger faith " for all 
men ; for the right of the individual to investigate 
and think for himself, without apology to his 
neighbor for the conclusions to which the truth 
led him. He looked forward to the time when 
Christianity without bigotry shall triumph, and 
when the controversies of creeds shall have van- 
ished.^ '^^ He believed that this result would be 
gained by living, not in external differences, but 
in fundamental unities. He agreed with Arthur 
Hallam " that the essential feelings of religion 
subsist in the utmost diversity of forms*; " that 
" different language does not always imply dif- 
ferent opinions, nor different opinions any dif- 
ference in real faith." ^"^^ He realized that every 
formal statement of truth must of necessity be 
imperfect, and therefore he had great sympathy 

"» Ibid., p. 468. 
'"^Ibid., p. 326. 
"'Ibid., p. 309. 



170 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

with those who criticised such statements, pro- 
vided they did not reject all spiritual truth in so 
doing. His advice was : " Cling to faith be- 
yond the forms of faith." At the same time, he 
felt that definitions of truth have great im- 
portance and value for many people. He cau- 
tioned the one who boasted that he was free 
from bondage to formal faith, to beware lest, in 
a world of so many confusions, he fail, " ev'n for 
want of such a type." In the language of the 
bishop of Ripon : 

To him, as to so many, truth is so infinitely great that 
all we can do with our poor human utterances is to 
try and clothe it in such language as will make it clear 
to ourselves, and clear to those to whom God sends 
us with a message, but meanwhile, above us and our 
thoughts — above our broken lights — God in his 
mercy, God in his Love, God in his infinite nature is 
greater than all."^ 

Tennyson's portraits of priests, friars, abbots, 
monks, and clergymen are not such as to inspire 
special confidence in the efficiency of the church 
as a social institution, when it is remembered 
how largely the work of the church is dependent 
upon these official representatives. In the his- 
torical plays, and in poems portraying scenes and 
events of historic interest, church officials and 
the representatives of religious orders are pic- 

"^ Loc. cit., pp. 310, 311. 



SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 171 

tured as they actually were. The truth does not 
flatter. But fact is better than flattery. It must 
be remembered that he is true to the time of 
which he is writing, and is not attempting to 
give his opinion of the church of today. Here 
are some lines which are typical of his treatment 
of degenerate church officials and monastic or- 
ders : " I am emptier than a friar's brains ; " ^'^* 
" The poor man's money goes to fat the friar." ^^' 
One of Wyatt's men in "Queen Mary" says: 
•" I know not my letters ; the old priests taught 
me nothing." ^'^^ Becket says, in the drama bear- 
ing his name : " I cannot tell why monks should 
all be cowards." ^'''^ Robin classes together 
" these proud priests, and these barons," as 
" devils that make this blessed England hell." ^"^^ 
Priors, friars, abbots, monks, form an unholy 
group despised by Robin and his band. 

For playing upside down with Holy Writ, 
Sell all thou hast and give it to the poor ; 
Take all they have and give it to thyself."* 

There are other lines that picture clergymen 
of a type more familiar to the men of today, 

"' " Sir John Oldcastle," p. 521. 

"'Ibid., p. 524. 

"" Act II, sc. 3, p. 601. 

^"Act V, sc. 2, p. 746. 

"' " The Foresters," Act III, sc. i, p. 857. 

'™ Ibid. 



172 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

though scarcely more to be admired. Here is 

one: 

Half awake I heard, 
The parson taking wide and wider sweeps, 
Now harping on the church-commissioners. 
Now hawking at Geology and schism ; 
Until I woke and found him settled down 
Upon the general decay of faith 
Right thro' the world, at home was little left, 
And none abroad ; there was no anchor, none 
To hold by."" 

The conclusion of this poem contains another ref- 
erence to the same parson : 

At which the Parson, sent to sleep with sound, 
And waked with silence, grunted, " Good ! " but we 
Sat rapt.'" 

A man who could sleep through the reading of 
such a poem as " Morte D'Arthur " needs no 
other label to show the kind of a beast he is. 

Someone has said that a man's estimate of 
woman is the measure of his manhood. The 
" fat-faced curate, Edward Bull," thus states his 
opinion of woman : 

I take it, God made the woman for the man 
And for the good and increase of the world. 
A pretty face is well, and this is well. 
To have a dame indoors, that trims us up 
And keeps us tight ; but these unreal ways 



SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 173 

Seem but the theme of writers, and indeed 
Worn thread-bare."' 

In " Sea Dreams " we have a picture of a clergy- 
man of still another type: 

A heated pulpiteer, 

Not preaching simple Christ to simple men, 

Announced the coming doom, and fulminated 

Against the scarlet woman and her creed ; 

For sideways up he flung his arms, and shriek'd 

" Thus, thus with violence," ev'n as if he held 

The Apocalyptic mill stone, and himself 

Were that great Angel ; " Thus with violence 

Shall Babylon be cast into the sea; 

Then comes the close." "' 

In " Maud " we read of 

The snowy-banded, dilettante. 
Delicate handed priest,^"* 

who intoned the service in the village church. 
In " Despair " the man who attempted suicide 
by drowning, and was saved by the minister of 
the sect he had abandoned, thus addressed his 
rescuer : 

I know you of old — 

Small pity for those that have ranged from the nar- 
row warmth of your fold 

Where you bawl'd the dark side of your faith, and a 
God of eternal rage, 

"^ " Edwin Morris," p. 83. 

>^P. 156. 

'** " Maud," VIII, p. 293. 



174 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

'Till you flung us back on ourselves, and the human 
heart and the Age."' 

Becket calls Gilbert Foliot, bishop of London, 
" A worldly follower of the worldly strong." ^^^ 
The church warden, who has watched the meth- 
ods by which clergymen have been promoted, 
gives this wordly-wise advice to the curate. It 
is significant as revealing the spirit of the church 
of the time : 

But Parson 'e will speak out, saw, now 'e be sixty- 
seven, 
He'll niver swap Owlby an' Scratby fur owt but the 

kingdom o' Heaven ; 
An' thou'll be 'is Curate 'ere, but, if iver tha means to 

git 'igher, 
Tha mun tackle the sins o' the Wo'ld, an' not the faults 

o' the Squire. 
An' I reckons tha'll light of a livin' somewheers i' the 

Wowd or the Fen, 
If tha cottons down to thy betters, an' keeaps thysen to 

thysen. 
But niver not speak plaain out, if tha wants to git 

forrards a bit, 
But creeap along the hedge-bottoms, an' thou'll be a 

Bishop yit."' 

Leigh Hunt, in a letter to S. C. Hall, has an 
interesting comment upon the Tennysons which 
sheds light upon this topic. The sarcasm is only 

^^ Poems, p. 545. 

^^ " Becket," Act I, sc. 3, p. 710. 

"' " The Church Warden and the Curate," p. 885. 



SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 175 

the barb of the arrow of truth. He says : 
" Charles is not equal tO' Alfred, but still partakes 
of the genuine faculty. He has a graceful lux- 
ury, but combining less of the spiritual with it, 
which I suppose is the reason why he has become 
a clergyman." ^^^ 

But there is another, and very different, type 
of the clergyman given to us in the works of the 
poet — a broader, abler, nobler, more self-sacri- 
ficing man, whose character reveals a higher mis- 
sion for the church in human society. In the 
" Conclusion " of " The May Queen " we have a 
reference to this higher type of minister: 

But still I think it can't be long before I find release ; 
And that good man, the clergyman, has told me words 

of peace, 
O blessings on his kindly voice and on his silver hair! 
And blessings on his whole life long, until he meet me 

there ! 
O blessings on his kindly heart and on his silver head ! 
A thousand times I blest him, as he knelt beside my 

bed.'*' 

The lines " To J. M. K." portray a clergyman 
as admirable, but of the more military type: 

My hope and heart is with thee — thou wilt be 
A latter Luther, and a soldier priest 
To scare church-harpies from the Master's feast ; 
Our dusted velvets have much need of thee ; 

^^ Memoir, Vol. I, p. 164. 
"»P. 52. 



176 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

Thou art no sabbath-drawler of old saws, 
Distill'd from some worm-canker'd homily, 
But spurr'd at heart with fieriest energy, 
To embattail and to wall about thy cause 
With iron-worded proof, hating to hark 
The humming of the drowsy pulpit-drone 
Half God's good sabbath, while the wornout clerk 
Brow-beats his desk below. Thou from a throne 
Mounted in heaven will shoot into the dark 
Arrows of lightnings. I will stand and mark."" 

Cranmer in his time of peril asked pity, not for 
himself, but for " the poor flock," the women and 
the children who held with him.^^^ Becket 
fed the poor and was loved by the people.^ ^^ 
Up to the very last Becket defended his flock, 
though ready to die himself. 

Tennyson showed by his friendships the type 
of minister which he most honored. One of his 
old and highly esteemed college friends was Mr. 
Rashdall, the clergyman of Malvern. This man 
was deeply loved by his parishioners, and was so 
simple and direct in his preaching that he had 
emptied the Dissenting chapels for miles around. 
He often held his church services in the fields. ^^^ 
Maurice was also an intimate friend of the poet, 
and was honored as an able, courageous, and thor- 

"* P. 25. 

"'"Queen Mary," Act IV, sc. 2, p. 629. 

"' " Becket," Act I, sc. 4, p. 714; also Act V, sc. 2, p. 741. 

^"^ Memoir, Vol. I, p. 355- 



SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 177 

oughly honest minister of the church. Tennyson 
considered him the foremost thinker among the 
churchmen of the time, though ^^^ the sermons 
of Robertson, of Brighton, seemed to him the 
most spiritual utterances coming from any minis- 
ter of his day. It is such men as these that make 
the church a social institution of real importance 
in the progress of the world. 

^**Ibid., p. 430. 



CHAPTER VIII 
DEMOCRACY AND PROGRESS 

By a democracy we understand a government 
in which the supreme power is directly exercised 
or controlled by the people collectively. A 
democracy in name is not necessarily one in fact. 
A government called by some other name may be 
a democracy in reality. What Tennyson says in 
regard to the people as a class is of interest to 
us as indicating his views of the policy of putting 
supreme governmental power in their hands. 
There are some lines that would give us reason 
to infer that the poet had not great confidence in 
the wisdom, the ability, or the character of the 
masses. St. Simeon Stylites calls the people who 
take him for a saint " silly " and " foolish." ^ In 
"The Vision of Sin" these lines occur: 

Welcome, fellow-citizens, 
Hollow hearts and empty heads." 

When Merlin the Wise compares the harlot to 
the crowd, he gives his judgment of the people 
as well as of the scarlet woman : 

*"St. Simeon Stylites," pp. 87, 88. 
'P. 122. 

178 



DEMOCRACY AND PROGRESS 179 

And in this 
Are harlots hke the crowd, that if they find 
Some stain or blemish in a name of note, 
Not grieving that their greatest are so small, 
Inflate themselves, with some insane delight, 
And judge all Nature from her feet of clay. 
Without the will to lift their eyes, and see 
Her Godlike head crown'd with spiritual fire 
And touching other worlds. I am weary of her.' 

Tiresias does not express any higher opinion 
of the wisdom of the people. He says : 

When the crowd would roar 
For blood, for war, whose issue was their doom. 
To cast wise words among the multitude 
Was flinging fruit to lions. 



I would that I were gathered to my rest 
And mingled with the famous kings of old. 
On whom about their ocean-islets flash 
The faces of the Gods — the wise man's word, 
Here trampled by the populace underfoot. 
There crown'd with worship.* 

The same estimate, coupled with a strong state- 
ment of the untruthfulness of the multitude is 
given in " Vastness " : 

Lies upon this side, lies upon that side, truthless vio- 
lence mourn'd by the wise, 

Thousands of voices drowning his own in a popular 
torrent of lies." 

' " Merlin and Vivien," p. 393. 
*" Tiresias," pp. 539, 540. 
"P. 812. 



i8o SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

The common people have from the remotest 
times been bearers of burdens, victims of tyranny 
and oppression. This truth of history the poet 
has not failed to portray. This is the representa- 
tion in " The Palace of Art " : 

The people here, a beast of burden slow, 
Toil'd onward, prick'd with goads and stings.* 

In " Locksley Hall " he used a figure he gained 
from reading Pringle's Travels, to indicate the 
slow advance of a suffering people : 

Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion creeping 
nigher. 

Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly- 
dying fire.' 

Godiva knew of the burdens of the people and 
" loathed to see them overtaxed." 

But whatever may be the theory concerning 
the right of the people to exercise power in gov- 
ernment, that power has actually been exercised 
in the past to a greater or less extent. To the 
poet the signs indicate an increase rather than a 
diminution of it in the future. The speaker in 
" Locksley Hall " sees " the standards of the 
people plunging thro' the thunder storm." ^ This 
observation of the tendency of the time finds ex- 

' P. 46. 

' P. lOI. 
'P. lOI. 



DEMOCRACY AND PROGRESS i8i 

pression even in " In Memoriam." One asks the 
mourner : 

Is this an hour 

For private sorrow's barren song, 
When more and more the people throng 
The chairs and thrones of civil power?' 

The devoted Edith asserts that Harold is not to 
be the last English king of England, but 

First of a hne coming from the people, 
And chosen by the people." 

Antonius speaks a good word for the common 
throng, when he says to the lustful Synorix : 

I have heard them say in Rome, 
That your own people cast you from their bounds. 
For some unprincely violence to a woman, 

As Rome did Tarquin." 

It is undoubtedly true, as has been stated by 
a careful student of English social and political 
life, that many of the " equality " ideas current in 
England came from France. It may not be ex- 
actly agreeable to an Englishman to admit the 
correctness of this statement, but any unpreju- 
diced observer familiar with the social history 
of both countries will find no good reason 
seriously to question it. The hopes that the 

•XXI, p. 253. 

" " Harold," Act V, sc. i, p. 687. 

""The Cup," Act I, sc. i, p. 751. 



i82 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

French patriots, with their motto of " liberty, 
equality, and fraternity," aroused in the minds of 
men were crushed to earth by the horrors of the 
Revolution. But the principles at the founda- 
tion of that great struggle were thus brought to 
the attention of the world, and have never since 
been forgotten. They became effective in two 
ways: first, by securing the enthusiastic support 
of those who came to believe in them when 
definitely stated; and, second, by arousing the 
determined opposition of the conservatives who 
believed that such principles are pernicious and 
tend to the overthrow of established government. 
The French struggle for liberty clarified the ideas 
of the world by setting out in bold relief the prin- 
ciples for which the struggle stood, and calling 
for a division of the house. 

" Equality " is a word which has been greatly 
misunderstood. If it meant that every man has 
the same intellectual and moral power as every 
other man, and should have the same political 
and financial possessions, it is an absurdity that 
needs only to be stated to be recognized. Yet 
this is what many foreigners supposed the 
" equality " cry of France to signify. If under- 
stood to mean equality of opportunity, it would 
win more adherents and arouse less violent op- 
position. Tennyson does not dwell upon this 
theme. His references to it make it evident that 



DEMOCRACY AND PROGRESS 183 

he shared tHe common dread of the proclamation 
of doctrines that had brought commotion, an- 
archy, and bloodshed into Paris. In " Aylmer's 
Field " he speaks of " that cursed France with 
her egalities." ^^ He has no confidence in the 
sanity of the " passionate shriek for the rights 
of an equal humanity " that had echoed again 
and again in the streets of Paris.^^ It was the 
Princess, whose views of human society were 
greatly altered by her experiment with her col- 
lege, who said : 

All things serve their time 
Toward that great year of equal mights and rights." 

Tennyson, when speaking for himself, would 
have described the millennial year in different 
terms. His own contempt for the false idea of 
equality, in which many people trusted, is ex- 
pressed perhaps best of all in " Locksley Hall 
Sixty Years After " : 

Envy wears the mask of Love, and laughing sober fact 

to scorn, 
Cries to Weakest as to Strongest, Ye are equals, equal 

born ! 
Equal-born? O yes, if yonder hill be level with the 

flat. 
Charm us, Orator, till the Lion look no larger than 

the Cat, 

'^ P. 146. 

""Beautiful City," p. 835. 

""The Princess," p. 187. 



i84 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

Till the Cat thro' that mirage of overheated language 

loom, 
Larger than the Lion — Demos end in working its own 

doom."* 

Tennyson dreaded, feared the control of the 
ignorant, passionate crowd. He believed that 
the masses could be captured by demagogues with 
crude theories and wild schemes. He exhorts 
the patriot not to 

Feed with crude imaginings 
The herd, wild hearts and feeble wings 
That every sophister can lime." 

He did not want in England the " brainless mobs 
and lawless Powers " of France,^ ^ These meant 
to him only "brute control," ^^ and he believed 
that " the tyranny of all leads backward to the 
tyranny of one." ^^ The freedom England had 
gained might be lost " thro' the tonguesters." ^^ 
He adds ironically : 

You that woo the voices — tell them " old experience is 

a fool " 
Teach your flatter'd kings that only those who cannot 

read can rule.*^ 

"P. 563. 

"P. 65. 

" " Wellington Ode," p. 219. 

^^ Ibid., p. 220. 

" " Tiresias,'' p. 539. 

'""Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," p. 564. 

''Ibid. 



DEMOCRACY AND PROGRESS 185 

If the masses come into power, they cannot be 
relied upon ; for " the many will feel no shame 
to give themselves the lie." ^^ He was too 
ardent a lover of liberty to tolerate with any com- 
posure " that tyranny of a majority in which 
alone a material omnipotence is united with a 
legal one." ^^ 

Yet, despite such lines as these that have been 
quoted, Tennyson was a believer in the true 
democracy, the Greek idea of which is " the pub- 
lic good." Mr. Sydney Webb affirms that in 
America democracy means " equality," while in 
England it means government of the people, by 
the people, and for the people. If this distinction 
be a real one, it would be entirely correct to say 
that the poet believed in the English, but not in 
the American, type of democracy. There can be 
no doubt of his willingness to give his cordial 
support to the English system. The historical 
plays contain frequent reference to the fact that 
England's rulers are the actual choice of her peo- 
ple, and her laws the expression of the people's 
will. He conceived it to be the duty of the crown 
and the statesman to see that such conditions are 
maintained, and that from time to time such 
changes are made as are demanded by new needs 
and new ideas. Whether democracy in America 

« " The Cup," Act II, p. 761. 
^ Memoir, Vol. I, p. 506. 



i86 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

means equality may be a serious question. Those 
who see it at short range are more inclined to 
the opinion that it means the tyranny of the 
" machine " and the " boss " ; but this is, of 
course, a perversion of the early and true ideal 
of the republic. Tennyson expressed a sincere 
admiration for the constitution of the United 
States. Writing to Walt Whitman in 1887, he 
said : " Truly the Mother Country .... 
may feel that how much-soever the daughter owes 
to her, she, the mother, has nevertheless some- 
thing to learn from the daughter. Especially I 
would note the care taken to guard a noble con- 
stitution from rash and unwise innovations." ^^ 
In a letter to Mr. Bosworth Smith, written two 
years earlier, he says : " As to any vital changes 
in our constitution, I could wish that some of our 
prominent politicians who look to America as 
their ideal might borrow from her an equivalent 
to that conservatively restrictive provision under 
the fifth article of her Constitution. I believe 
that it would be a great safeguard to our own in 
these days of ignorant and reckless theorists." ^^ 
He had confidence that the throne of the queen 
of whom he wrote would be " unshaken still," 

'* Remezi' of Reviews, December, 1892, p. 562. 
'"^Loc. cit. 



DEMOCRACY AND PROGRESS 187 

because it was " broad-based upon her people's 
will." 26 

With all the perils of the time, with all the 
demagoguery and cries of revolution, Tennyson 
still believed in the " common sense of most " 
that would " hold a fretful realm in awe." ^^ 
The great problems may have to look to the 
future for their complete solution, but there will 
come a time when " crowds at length will be 
sane." ^s xhjg " crown'd Republic's crowning 
common sense " has " saved her many times," ^^ 
and there is reason to believe that this good sense 
is in increasing rather than diminishing. There 
are still 

Men loud against all forms of power — 
Unfurnish'd brows, tempestuous tongues — 

Expecting all things in an hour — 
Brass mouths and iron lungs; 

but there is still the vision 

Of Knowledge fusing class with class. 

Of civic Hate no more to be, 
Of Love to leaven all the mass, 

Till every soul be free.'* 

'^"To the Queen," p. i. 
''"Locksley Hall," p. loi. 
**" Wellington Ode," p. 220. 
" " To the Queen," p. 475. 
^ " Freedom," p. 576. 



i88 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

The social conditions desired by the wise can- 
not be brought about in an hour. Political power 
is coming more and more into the possession of 
the people, but this power must not be placed in 
the hands of the ignorant and the passionate. 
Those who are to bear responsibilities must be 
trained to bear them well, for the " public good " 
according to the old Greek idea. There must be 
some sort of " universal culture for the crowd." ^^ 

Tennyson's interest in the poor and humble 
gives to many of his poems, and those among the 
best he ever wrote, a genuinely democratic flavor. 
He was always in sympathy with the cause of 
liberal reform. His only vote in the House of 
Lords was given in favor of the enfranchisement 
of the agricultural laborer ;^^ but this was be- 
cause he believed that the agricultural laborer was 
prepared for the ballot. He said that the two 
great social questions impending in England were 
" the housing and education of the poor man be- 
fore making him our master, and the higher edu- 
cation of women." ^^ Those who were prepared 
to serve the public weal he wanted to see sharers 
in the government ; but no one should be asked or 
permitted to bear such responsibilities who was 
unfit to bear them for the good of all. This was 

" " The Princess," p. 167. 

'' Reznew of Reviezw, December, 1892, p. 562. 

"^Memoir, Vol. I, p. 249. 



DEMOCRACY AND PROGRESS 189 

to him a fundamental principle of the true 
democracy for which he stood and which he 
preached to others. Thus, ruler and people could 
work together for the highest ends — " one for all 
and all for one, one soul." ^^ 

It is evident, from words already quoted, that 
Tennyson considered the two great social ques- 
tions in England largely questions of education. 
The great need of educaton among the poor, and 
especially among women, is shown often in the 
poems, though he does not lose sight of the 
general truth implied in the words of Balin, as 
he looked upon Lancelot : 

These be gifts, 
Born with the blood, not learnable, divine, 
Beyond my reach.^"* 

The contemptuous comments of " The Village 
Wife " upon the actions of the Squire who wrote 
a " book himself," and gave a big price for " an 
owd scatted stoan," and prized a brown pot and 
a bone which he dug out of the earth, and bought 
old coins that could not be passed with the 
queen's gold, and " bowt little statutes all-naakt 
an' which was a shaame to be seen," and " niver 
knovvd nowt but boooks, an' boooks, as thou 
knaws, beant nowt ; " such comments as these re- 
veal intellectual needs that are appealing as well 

" " Harold," Act II, sc. 3, P- 681. 
" " Balin and Balan," p. 372. 



190 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

as ludicrous. In the household of the squire " the 
lasses " tore the leaves out of the middle of valu- 
able books to kindle the fire.^^ One of Wyatt's 
men declared that he didn't know his letters, " be- 
cause the old priests had taught him nothing." ^"^ 
Farmer Steer admitted that he had no time to 
make himself " a scholard " while he was making 
himself a gentleman. Allen, the farm laborer, 
says that he " were born afoor schoolintime." ^^ 
Attempts have always been made to meet in 
some way such needs as these. The methods em- 
ployed did not always commend themselves to 
the judgment of the poet. His criticisms upon 
educators, upon schools, upon the studies pur- 
sued and the methods of teaching, enable us to 
judge of the educational ideal which seemed to 
him most worthy of being cherished. In " The 
Princess " one 

Discussed his tutor, rough to common men, 
But honeying at the whisper of a lord; 
And one the Master as a rogue in grain 
Veneer'd with sanctimonious theory." 

These species are not extinct, and Tennyson had 
for them the same contempt which every true 
man has today. In the same poem we have at 

"P. 515- 

" " Queen Mary," Act II, sc. 3, p. 601. 

" " The Promise of May," Act I, p. 782 ; Act III, p. 795- 

••P. 167. 



DEMOCRACY AND PROGRESS 191 

least a partial description of the course of study 
in the " University for maidens." Here is a 
narrative of a half-day spent in " stately theatres 
bench'd crescent-wise " : 

in each we sat, we heard, 
The grave Professor. On the lecture slate 
The circle rounded under female hands 
With flawless demonstration; followed then 
A classic lecture rich in sentiment, 
With scraps of thundrous Epic lilted out 
By violet hooded Doctors, elegies 
And quoted odes and jewels five words long 
That on the stretch'd fore-finger of all Time 
Sparkle for ever ; then we dipt in all 
That treats of whatsoever is, the state, 
The total chronicles of man, the mind. 
The morals, something of the frame, the rock, 
The star, the bird, the fish, the shell, the flower, 
Electric chemic laws, and all the rest. 
And whatsoever can be taught and known.*" 

Tennyson revisited Cambridge, where he and 
Arthur Hallam had been companions, and v^ent 
to the room " where," he says. 

Once we held debate, a band 
Of youthful friends, on mind and art 
And labour and the changing mart. 
And all the frame work of the land." 

In a letter to his aunt, written early in his col- 
lege days, he does not speak with great enthu- 

*° Ibid., pp. 178, 179. 

""In Memoriam," LXXXVII, p. 270. 



192 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

siasm of his university life. He says : " I know- 
not how it is, but I feel isolated here, in the 
midst of society. The country is so disgustingly 
level, the revelry of the place so monotonous, the 
studies of the University so uninteresting, so 
much matter of fact. None but dry-headed, cal- 
culating, angular little gentlemen can take much 
delight in them." ■^^ This was his candid opinion 
of the conditions prevailing in the Cambridge 
of his day. The course of study seemed to him 
narrow and dry. He was impatient with the 
lethargy there, with the lack of any " teaching 
that grappled with the ideas of the age, and 
stimulated and guided thought on the subjects 
of deepest human interest." These lines, descrip- 
tive of the Cambridge of 1830, have been pub- 
lished in the Memoir by his son : 

Therefore, your Halls, your ancient Colleges, 
Your portals statued with old kings and queens, 
Your gardens, myriad-volumed libraries, 
Wax-lighted chapels, and rich carven screens, 
Your doctors, and your proctors, and your deans, 
Shall not avail you, when the Day beam sports, 
New risen o'er awaken'd Albion. No ! 
Nor yet your solemn organ pipes that blow 
Melodious thunders thro' your vacant courts 
At noon and eve, because your manner sorts 
Not with this age wherefrom ye stand apart, 
Because the lips of little children preach 

*^ Memoir, Vol. I, p. 34. 



DEMOCRACY AND PROGRESS 193 

Against you, you that do profess to teach 
And teach us nothing, feeding not the heart.*^ 

Cambridge changed with the years, and he 
afterward regretted such bitter words as these. 
When the university adapted itself to modern 
requirements, he honored it as much as before 
he had condemned it. He went back to Cam- 
bridge in 1872. What impressed him most at 
that time was the change for the better in 
the relations between don and undergraduate. 
Speaking to Dr. Butler of the time when he was 
a student at the great university (1828-31), he 
said : " There was a want of love in Cambridge 
then." In 1872, however, he found teacher and 
student on terms of personal friendship and ever 
ready for an interchange of ideas. This change 
he believed would have the most helpful influence 
on the opinions, sympathies, and aspirations of 
generations to come. In this view he is entirely 
at one with some of the comparatively recent ut- 
terances of prominent educators in America. 
The change has begun to be made in some of the 
great educational institutions of this land. It is 
one of the hopeful signs, and the cloud of prom- 
ise is already larger than a man's hand. 

The institutions for the higher education of 
women should say to those to be benefited by 

*'Ibid., pp. 66, 67. 



194 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

their opportunities what the Princess said to her 
maidens : 

Work out your freedom, Girls, 

Knowledge is now no more a fountain seal'd." 

The various characters in the poem give many 
different views upon the higher education of 
women. In the end, the Princess, whom Tenny- 
son considered one of the noblest among his 
women, comes to a sane and sensible conclusion, 
and recognizes the relation she holds to her Crea- 
tor and to society. 

The ironical lines in " Locksley Hall Sixty 
Years After," 

Feed the budding rose of boyhood, with the drainage 
of your sewer: 

Set the maiden fancies wallowing in the troughs of 
Zolaism, 

express the poet's detestation of the impure in 
literature and life, and his fear of its influence 
upon the young. '*^ By his words and example, 
Tennyson urged men to banish such influences by 
the substitution of those of opposite character. 
His own school days at Louth were not happy. 
He was at the mercy of " a tempestuous, flogging 
master of the old stamp," and was brutally cuffed 
by a big lad because he was a new boy. In later 

""The Princess," p. 174. 
«P. 564. 



DEMOCRACY AND PROGRESS 195 

years he said : " How I did hate that school ! 
The only good I ever got from it was the mem- 
ory of the words ' sonus desiHentis aquae ' and 
of an old wall covered with wild weeds opposite 
the school window." ^^ Professor Hale gives an 
interesting account of Louth School, and the 
reader of it cannot wonder at Tennyson's hatred 
of this Educational Gehenna.'*''' 

Tennyson was devoted to his own children, and 
made them his companions after the most civil- 
ized and Christian ideals of modern times. He 
raced with them up hill and down dale, read to 
them, played football or built castles with them, 
and taught them to shoot with bow and arrow, 
or went flower-hunting with them. If it was 
stormy, he would build cities of brick for the 
children, play battledore and shuttlecock, blow 
bubbles with them, help them to act charades or 
scenes from some well-known play. In the au- 
tumn he would work with them, brushing up 
leaves, making new glades through the shrubs, or 
reshingling old paths. His chief anxiety was 
that his children should be truthful. He im- 
pressed this lesson upon them so that they never 
forgot it. Children thus trained in the home 
certainly ought to be well prepared to take their 

*" Memoir, Vol. I, pp. 6, 7. 
"Ibid., p. 497, Appendix. 



196 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

places as intelligent, working members of human 
society. 

Unfortunately, all children are not thus pre- 
pared for their work in the world, and this de- 
ficiency in education must be made good in later 
years, so far as possible, if the highest interests 
of society are to be subserved. To meet this 
need, in part at least, the university-extension 
movement was called into existence. Tennyson 
early appreciated the importance of this work and 
gave to it his hearty approval. He believed that 
there was very great social significance in so 
practical a plan devised to give to those outside 
the favored classes the advantages of the higher 
education and culture. Upon it he built large 
hopes for the future of the people."*^ 

When the Chartist and socialist agitations as- 
sumed alarming intensity and proportions, many 
advocated imprisonment and violent repression 
for their participants. The poet discountenanced 
all such threatened punitive measures, and urged 
instead a more widespread national education, 
as the real remedy for social disorders. He 
hoped especially that the Bible would be read and 
studied by all classes of people, and expounded 
simply by their teachers. He declared that " the 
Bible ought to be read, were it only for the sake 
of the grand English in which it is written, an 

''Memoir, Vol. I, p. 68. 



DEMOCRACY AND PROGRESS 197 

education in itself." '^^ At the same time, he be- 
lieved that the education of every boy should pre- 
pare him to defend his country in time of na- 
tional peril. To Colonel Richards, who was 
prominent in the formation of vounteer rifle corps 
in 1859, he wrote: "I hope that you will not 
cease from your labors until it is the law of the 
land that every male child in it shall be trained 
to the use of arms." ^^ This was in his judgment 
the best way to maintain peace. He believed 
that every child should be trained to save the 
state in time of danger, as well as to minister to 
its highest progress in time of peace. An edu- 
cation which does not reach all of the people, to 
develop the resources of individuals, and educate 
them for their places in the social body, was to 
him a defective system. He desired a democracy 
made up of persons whose powers are developed 
by education, and who are trained to serve their 
fellow-men and the state by the arts of peace, 
and to defend the nation in time of war. A 
democracy of demagoguery and artificial equality 
was to him a menace and an abhorrence. 

True education does not consist merely in ac- 
quiring or imparting knowledge. It is bringing 
all the powers of the individual to normal de- 
velopment for their work in the world. The 

"^Ibid.. p. 308. 
''"Ibid., p. 436. 



198 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

progress of the individual and of the race is, 
however, largely impeded by ignorance. There- 
fore knowledge has a distinct social mission to 
fulfil. A part of the work of him who loves his 
land is to " make knowledge circle with the 
winds." ^^ Doing this, he may be 

Certain, if knowledge bring the sword, 
That knowledge takes the sword away.""^ 

This principle is illustrated by the schoolboy who 
is cruel " ere he grow to pity — more from igno- 
rance than will." ^^ When his ignorance is ban- 
ished, his cruelty is done away. Wherever in 
life that which knows not rules that which knows, 
it is to its own harm.^"* All classes need knowl- 
edge. When they gain it, they will be fused into 
one great brotherhood ; for it is ignorance that 
divides class from class.^^ 

Knowledge can certainly do much for the 
world. It not only does away with the tyranny 
of ignorance and fuses class with class; it does 
much to make men free.^^ Yet at present it is 
very imperfect. A thousand things are hidden 

" " Love Thou Thy Land," p. 65. 

'=P. 66. 

""Walking to the Mail," p. 82. 

" " To the Queen," p. 475. 

°° " Freedom," p. 576. 

''" " The Princess," p. 202. 



DEMOCRACY AND PROGRESS 199 

for a hundred that are known.^'^ One of the 
grave dangers of the time is a too great depend- 
ence upon knowledge. There is much that it 
cannot do. It is at best only one of three forces 
that must always work together: 

Beauty, Good and Knowledge are three sisters, 
That never can be sundered without tears.^* 

It is a great mistake to suppose that knowledge is 
" all in all." °^ Of one who held to that opinion 
it is written: 

Something wild within her breast, 
A greater than all knowledge beat her down."' 

Knowledge may claim too high a rank: 

Let her know her place ; 

She is second, not the first." 

Vivien the harlot conquered Merlin the sage.^^ 
" The Ancient Sage " declares, 

Knowledge is the swallow on the lake, 
That sees and stirs the surface-shadow there 
But never yet hath dipt into the abysm.*^ 

" " Mechanophilus," p. 890. 
'^Memoir, Vol. I, p. 119. 
""The Princess," p. 171. 
''Ibid., p. 213. 

" " In Memoriam," CXIV, p. 280. 
**" Merlin and Vivien," p. 395. 
"'Poems, p. 548. 



200 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSOxN 

This is the partial and imperfect knowledge that 
we possess. 

It leads to something higher and better. 
Utter knowledge is but utter love.°* 

As it points to that which is higher and leads the 
way, it fulfils its most exalted mission. This is 
the estimate put upon knowledge in the education 
of the individual and the race by one whom 
Thackeray pronounced the wisest man he knew.^^ 
Science is one of the special departments of 
knowledge in which Tennyson was most deeply 
interested. He gloried in its achievements, and 
at the same time recognized its limitations. The 
surgeon in " The Children's Hospital " " was hap- 
pier using the knife than in trying to save the 
limb," ^^ and was heard to mutter : " The good 
Lord Jesus has had his day." ^"^ In " Queen 
Mary " he refers to the time when the " letting of 
the blood " was a common method of treatment 
employed by physicians. ^^ He does not regard 
science as infallible, as do many who delight in 
juggling with pretentious terms. He reserves 
the right to refuse to accept the dicta of science, 
if in his judgment they are not true. He says : 

""The Ring," p. 814. 

"'"Memoir, Vol. I, p. 419. 

°' " In the Children's Hospital," p. 517. 

" Ibid. 

''Act III, sc. 2, p. 609. 



DEMOCRACY AND PROGRESS 201 

Not only cunning casts in clay 
Let science prove we are, and then 
What matters Science unto men. 
At least to me? I would not stay.'* 

Akbar, quoting the hymn to heaven, sings : 

All the tracks 
Of Science making toward thy perfectness 
Are blinding desert sand ; we scarce can spell 
The Alif of Thine Alphabet of Love.'" 

Yet true science has lofty ideals which it is con- 
stantly approaching. Now we are at a time 

When Science reaches forth her arms 
To feel from world to world, and charms 
Her secret from the latest moon?'* 

There is no real ground for discouragement in 
the fact that " science moves but slowly, slowly, 
creeping on from point to point." "^^ The prog- 
ress made by science has been real progress. In 
the year of the queen's jubilee, 1887, he and the 
English people could look back upon " fifty years 
of ever-brightening Science." "^^ 

These lines in the poems are passing glimpses 
of the life of Tennyson himself. He counted 
among his most valued friends such eminent 

"'"In Memoriam," CXX, p. 281. 
""Akbar's Dream," p. 879. 
" " In Memoriam," XXI, p. 253. 
'- " Locksley Hall," p. loi. 
''^ Poems, p. 805. 



202 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

scientists as the Duke of Argyll,"^^ Lord Lilford, 
the well-known ornithologist,''^'^ and Professor 
Tyndall.'''^ He showed great interest in the 
scientific discoveries of his timeJ"^ He read Dar- 
win's Origin of Species '^^ and Herschel's Astron- 
omy,'^^ studied geology at Farringford with the 
local geologist, and continually used the platform 
on the top of his house to observe the stars. ^*^ 
Moreover, he was careful, painstaking, and suc- 
cessful in his scientific study. Some years before 
the publication of " Vestiges of Creation," in 
1844, the sections of " In Memoriam " about 
evolution had been read to his friends. Of nat- 
ural selection Romanes said : "In * In Memo- 
riam ' Tennyson noted the fact, and a few years 
later Darwin supplied the explanation." ^^ The 
way in which eminent scientific men looked upon 
the poet is indicated by the biographer who says 
that " scientific leaders like Herschel, Owen, 
Sedgwick, and Tyndall regarded him as a cham- 
pion of Science and cheered him with words of 
genuine admiration for his love of Nature, for 

^* Memoir, Vol. I, p. 339. 
^^ Ibid., p. 414. 
'''Ibid., p. 427. 
''Ibid., p. 185. 
'^Ibid., p. 443. 
"Ibid., p. 356. 
*' Ibid., p. 431. 
^Ibid., p. 223. 



DEMOCRACY AND PROGRESS 203 

the eagerness with which he welcomed all the 
latest scientific discoveries, and for his trust in 
truth. Science indeed in his opinion was one of 
the main forces tending to disperse the supersti- 
tion that still darkens the world." ^^ They also 
strongly commended his scientific references as 
being true to the facts. One of the most famous 
physicians for the insane said of the mad-scene in 
" Maud " that it was " the most faithful repre- 
sentation of madness since Shakespeare." ^^ 
" Maud " is not a treatise on insanity, nor is any 
poem of Tennyson's an essay on botany or orni- 
thology. Rev. B. Jowett, in a letter to Mrs. Ten- 
nyson, gives a sensible word upon the subject. 
He says : " Have not many sciences such as 
Astronomy or Geology a side of feeling which is 
poetry? No sight touches ordinary persons so 
much as a starlight night." ^** 

Tennyson's positive acceptance of the doctrine 
of evolution undoubtedly did much to win for 
him the cordial approval of scientific men. His 
belief in the truth of this hypothesis of science 
influenced largely his doctrine of the individual 
and of society. Evolution may not make a man 
proud of the past, but it gives him a most won- 
derful hope for the future and counsels patience 

^'^ Ibid., pp. 298, 299. 
""Ibid., p. 398. 
'*lbid., p. 433- 



204 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

with the present. Someone has said that, " if 
man was once an ape. there is ah the greater 
reason to beHeve that he will one day be an 
angel." One can cheerfully labor and suffer if he 
is confident that in the end the product will justify 
the process. As far back as the years spent in 
Cambridge, Tennyson propounded the remark- 
able theory that the " development of the human 
body might possibly be traced from the radiated, 
vermicular, moluscous, and vertebrate organ- 
isms." Whatever may have been the significance 
of that statement made by him in a college dis- 
cussion, when the theory of organic evolution 
was seriously suggested by science, Tennyson 
was prepared to accept it. It came into his 
poetry because it was a part of himself. " So 
many a million of ages have gone to the making 
of man," ^^ and so great progress has already 
been made that it inspires the hope that in the 
ages to come he will become " no longer half 
akin to brute," ^^ 

In " The Promise of May " Edgar speaks of 
man as " the child of Evolution." ^' In the 
Memoir two or three stanzas are quoted that are 
of special interest as bearing upon this theme. 

*^ " Maud," p. 290. 

" " In Memoriam," p. 286. 

" Act I, p. 784. 



DEMOCRACY AND PROGRESS 205 

After the old verse XXVI of the " Palace of 
Art " were these lines : 

From shape to shape at first within the womb, 

The brain is molded, she began. 
And thro' all phases of all thought I come 

Unto the perfect man. 
All nature widens upward. Evermore 

The simpler essence lower Hes, 
More complex is more perfect, owning more 

Discourse, more widely wise."* 

Mr. Herbert Spencer was particularly interested 
in " The Two Voices," and in a letter to the poet 
quoted the lines : 

Or if thro' lower lives I came — 
Thro' all experience past became 
Consolidate in mind and frame. 

With the letter he sent a copy of his Psychology, 
which he said, " applies to the elucidation of men- 
-tal science, the hypothesis to which you refer." ^^ 
Tennyson faced with boldness the objections 
urged against the theory. He knew that the 
single life is ruthlessly sacrificed, that " a 
thousand types are gone." ^^ He held firmly to 
the belief in the freedom of the will. He recog- 
nized the possibility of degeneration as well as 
of progress. He saw 

""' Memoir, Vol. I, pp. 119, 120. 

''^Ibid., p. 41 r. 

^ " In Memoriam," LV, LVI, p. 261. 



2o6 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good 
And reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud.'" 

But his hope was still large for the future. 
He declared : " We are far from the noon of 
man, there is time for the race to grow." ^^ The 
race is growing, and man is being made. The 
whole record of the past indicates that we are 
moving toward the light. Man is being trained 
to take his share in the work of the world. This 
makes true democracy a certainty of the future, 
and a promised blessing, not a menace. To de- 
mand and force in a democracy that for which 
men are not prepared is revolution, and retards 
instead of hastens the progress of the race. To- 
day many things are to us mysterious, because 

the goal of this great vk^orld 
Lies beyond sight." 

Tennyson loved to live in the future. He 
called that his " world." ^^ He said : " To me 
often the far-off world seems nearer than the 
present, for in the present is always something 
unreal and indistinct, but the other seems a good 
solid planet, rolling round its green hills and 

•""Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," p. 565. 
" " The Dawn," p. 889. 
•="'To the Queen," p. 475. 
*' Memoir, Vol. I, p. 168. 



DEMOCRACY AND PROGRESS 207 

paradises to the harmony of more steadfast 
laws." ^"^ It was MerHn the Wise who said : 

my blood, 
Hath earnest in it of far springs to be,"* 

and that inner prophecy of a grander future for 
the individual and the world the poet felt in him- 
self. What the coming days have in store for us 
no mortal man can fully or accurately describe. 
We are sure that 

Far away beyond her myriad coming changes earth 

will be 
Something other than the wildest modern guess of you 

and me.°* 

There are new developments awaiting us in the 
future. Of that we are confident, though we 
cannot describe them in detail. Our sons will 
surpass us as we have exceeded the achievements 
of our fathers.'^'^ The Light will be Victor.^* 

England, France, all man to be. 

Will make one people ere man's race be run." 

The future, truthfully conceived, solves many of 
the riddles of the present. Of the mysteries he 
says: 

** Ibid., pp. 171, 172. 

*° " Merlin and Vivien," p. 389. 

""'Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," p. 566. 

"' " Mechanophilus," p. 890. 

** " On the Jubilee of Queen Victoria," p. 806. 

»• " To Victor Hugo," p. 534- 



2o8 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

Our playwright may show 

In some fifth Act what this wild drama means. "'° 

There is much hopeless pessimism in the world, 
and this fact of life finds abundant expression in 
the poetry of Tennyson. The man who suffers 
and loses may despair of himself. The man who 
observes and thinks may become hopeless con- 
cerning the possibilities of human nature. The 
one who reflects upon the history of peoples may 
despair of the future progress of the race. All 
these phases of pessimism are faithfully pictured 
in the poems. In " The Two Voices " one says 
to him : 

Thou art so steep'd in misery. 
Surely 'twere better not to be.^" 

In " The Promise of May," Harold exclaims: 
Better death with our first wail than life."' 

In " Vastness " one asks the question : 

What is it all, if we all of us end but in being our own 

corpse-coffins at last, 
Swallow'd in Vastness, lost in Silence, drown'd in the 

deeps of a meaningless Past ? ^"^ 

The same spirit is revealed in " Locksley Hall." 
Many lines in " Maud " are expressive of the 

"* " The Play," p. 836. 

"'P. 31. 

^"'Act II, p. 790. 

^•'P. 813. 



DEMOCRACY AND PROGRESS 209 

same pessimism that is blind to everything ex- 
cept the lower and grosser facts of the material 
world. One will serve as a type of all : " Cheat 
and be cheated and die; who knows? We are 
ashes and dust." ^•^■* 

Harold discarded the philosophy that teaches 
that the mind of the child is a '' tabula rasa," and 
exclaimed : 

There, there is written in invisible inks 
" Lust, Prodigality, Covetousness, Craft, 
Cowardice, Murder " — and the heat and fire 
Of life will bring them out, and black enough, 
So the child grow to manhood."" 

In " Geraint and Enid " the despair of the in- 
dividual and of human nature is also affirmed of 
the race. It is the logical inference. " O pur- 
blind race of miserable men " is the statement 
of this conclusion. ^•'^ It is essentially the same 
thought that is embodied in such lines as this in 
" Maud " : " Wretchedest age, since Time be- 
gan." '^^'^ The young man who is the chief 
speaker in this poem sees evil glaring out from 
all social arrangements. He sees despicable 
meanness and selfishness in every human form. 
Becoming discontented and cynical, his utter- 

'" P. 287. 

^""The Promise of May," Act II, pp. 789, 790. 

^~P. 354. 

'•^V, II, p. 305. 



210 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

ances are the expression of the typical pessimism 
of his day. 

While this phase of thought is truthfully por- 
trayed by the poet because it is a part of life, 
there can be no doubt that Tennyson himself was 
a consistent optimist. He had his moods of de- 
pression and despondency and despair, and these 
it is not difficult to trace in his writings ; but sun- 
shine always dispelled his darkness, hope always 
conquered his despair, and love always triumphed 
over his sorrow and doubt. This is seen in 
" The Two Voices," in such lines as these: 

" The highest mounted mind," he said, 
" Still sees the sacred morning spread 
The silent summit overhead."* 

He could truthfully say of himself: 

I look at all things as they are 
But thro' a kind of glory.'"* 

Even in the midst of his sorrow he classed him- 
self with those who 

trust that somehow good, 
Will be the final goal of ill."" 

He was hopeful that education would become 
broad and enlightening where it was narrow and 

"" P. 31- 

*"»"Will Waterproof," p. II2. 

"" " In Memoriam," LIV, p. 261. 



DEMOCRACY AND PROGRESS 211 

benumbing. His hope has since been justified by 
the facts. He was troubled and bewildered by 
the mysteries of life, yet " he had a profound 
trust that when all is seen face to face, all will 
be seen as the best." ^^^ He had an eternal hope 
for man, and that hope runs like a beam of light 
through the volumes of his verse. He even spoke 
of " a hope for the world in the coming wars," ^^^ 
and in so doing was entirely consistent with his 
general teaching conceniing the progress of the 
race. 

He believed and taught that war is sometimes 
a necessity. Then it is noble in any man 

To follow flying steps of Truth 
Across the brazen bridge of War."' 

In defiance of the Quaker doctrine, he held it to 
be far from sin to strike down a public foe; yet 
in the same stanza he declares that " lawful and 
lawless war are scarcely even akin." ^^^ " It is 
always better to fight for the good than to rail 
at the ill."^^^ He himself favored the Crimean 
War, and advocated an increase of the navy. 

He felt very deeply, however, the horrors of 
war. The French made of it a God ; but he called 

'" Memoir, Vol. I, p. 316. 

"-" " Maud," Part III, Sec. 6, St. i. 

'""Love Thou Thy Land," p. 65. 

"* " Maud," Part II, Sees. 5-10, p. 306. 

'''Ibid., Part III, Sec. 6, St. v. p. 308. 



212 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

it " wild war," " the child of Hell." '^^ Force 
does not, cannot, determine questions of right 
and wrong-. It is "the brute bullet " ^^^ that is 
the distinctive instrument employed by this 
" child of Hell," and the ruin it works is horrible 
beyond description. When war results in victory 
and you have killed your enemy, you must still 
remember that " your enemy was a man." ^^^ 
In short, the man 

Who loves war for war's own sake, 
Is fool, or crazed, or worse."" 

War for the defense of native land and for liberty 
is sometimes necessary; but it is a sad necessity 
even then, in view of its fearful cost. Tennyson 
actually loathed it, and his dream of the future 
millennium included, as one of its conspicuous 
features, " universal ocean softly w^ashing all her 
warless isles." ^^^ The highest service and the 
only justification of war are thus to make war 
forever impossible. 

War, being destructive, is therefore only nega- 
tively and secondarily the servant of progress. 
A righteous war may overthrow tyrants and op- 
pression, and by so doing clear the way for the 

"'"Third of February," p. 221. 
"^"Defense of Lucknow," p. 519. 
"*"Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," p. 563. 
"' " Epilogue," p. 570. 
"° " Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," p. 565. 



DEMOCRACY AND PROGRESS 213 

onward march of true progress. It is peace with 
honor that is the real friend of science, art, labor, 
and all the nobler ministries of life. All the 
special problems with which the sociologist deals 
are significant because of their relation to the 
progress of the individual and the race. It is to 
be expected that Tennyson will deal with the 
great principles underlying all these problems, 
rather than attempt any unusual solutions of 
them; that he will picture actual conditions 
against the background of the noblest ideals. 

Of the land in its relation to the welfare of 
the people he has comparatively little to say. 
The strong attachment of the landholders to 
their ancestral estates is portrayed again and 
again. The pathetic cry of Sir Richard, as he 
thought of the possibility of losing the land upon 
which generation after generation of his forbears 
had lived, is one of many expressions of the love 
of the Englishman for his inherited estate.^ ^^ 
The unfortunate condition of those whose farms 
were encumbered by debt and too heavily taxed is 
also frequently mentioned ; but there is compara- 
tively little to show that the poet had thought 
seriously of the relation of the ownership of land 
to the progress of a people. No one would ever 
be led to study the fundamental nature of the land 

^See "The Foresters," Act I, sc. i, p. 841. 



214 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

problem by reading the poems of Tennyson. In 
" The Princess " one asks the question : 

Why should not the great Sirs, 

Give up their Parks some dozen times a year, 

To let the people breathe ? ^^ 

In " The Promise of May," Dobson quotes a 
" hartist " who cried out even among his oppo- 
nents: "The land belongs to the people." ^^^ 
Such fugitive words as these can have very little 
social significance in such a study as we are mak- 
ing. 

Tennyson's knowledge of science would natu- 
rally induce him to give great emphasis to the 
power of environment in the development of the 
life of the individual. He knew that this theory 
of science was true in his own life, and believed 
that it must be true in all lives. The poet said 
with Ulysses : " I am a part of all that I have 
met." ^^^ Yet when this teaching seemed to con- 
flict with his conception of freedom, he positively 
affirmed the superiority of the man to his sur- 
roundings. In " In Memoriam " he speaks of 
the man 

Who breaks his birth's invidious bar, 
And grasps the skirts of happy chance, 

'" " Conclusion," p. 217. 
*^'Act I, p. 779- 
*'* " Ulysses," p. 95. 



DEMOCRACY AND PROGRESS 215 

And breasts the blows of circumstance. 
And grapples with his evil star; 

Who makes by force his merit known, 
And lives to clutch the golden keys, 
To mold a mighty state's decrees, 
And shape the whisper of the throne.'^ 

Thus, while recognizing the influence of environ- 
ment in the development of a life, Tennyson put 
his emphasis upon the possible mastery of all un- 
toward outward conditions by a soul that is free 
to aspire and to achieve. 

The city was to Tennyson, as it is to almost all 
refined natures, both attractive and repulsive. 
He had words of praise to speak for the " busy 
town," though Hallam railed at it in scornful 
terms.^^® When his home was in High Beach, 
he liked the nearness of London, and often re- 
sorted thither to see his friends, Spedding, Fitz- 
gerald, Kemble, and others.^ ^'^ The "central 
roar " of the great city had for him a peculiar 
charm. When he and his son went to the great 
world-metropolis, one of the first things they did 
was to walk to the Strand and Fleet Street. 

On the other hand, there were features of city 
life which were positively repellent to him. 
These are frequently referred to by different char- 

'»LXIV, p. 263. 

'" " In Memoriam," LXXXIX, p. 271. 

^"Memoir, Vol. I, p. 150. 



2i6 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

acters in the poems. Edwin Morris had but 
" one oasis in the dust and drouth of city hfe." ^^^ 
Another was dehghted to turn from the city lying 
'' beneath the drift of smoke," to the oak stand- 
ing in the open field. ^^® The city clerk was 
eager to get his little Margaret " from the giant 
factoried city-gloom." ^^^ Tennyson urged Mau- 
rice to visit him at the Isle of Wight, for 
that is " far from noise and smoke of town." ^^^ 
When obliged to stay in the city, he often wished 
himself " far away out of smoky London." ^^^ 
These disagreeable physical features of city life 
are only the material counterpart of social and 
moral conditions even more repellent. The rich, 
characterless man leaves his estate that " fulsome 
Pleasure " may " drown his heart in the gross 
mud-honey of town." ^^^ The " Ancient Sage " 
had not lost his wisdom when he said : " Night 
enough is there in yon dark city." ^^^ The one 
who speaks in " Locksley Hall Sixty Years 
After " paints the picture in colors that are dark, 
but none too dark for the facts. ^^'^ 

^■' " Edwin Morris," p. 83. 

'""The Talking Oak," p. 89. 

'"° " Sea Dreams," p. 156. 

"'"To Rev. F. D. Maurice," p. 234. 

^^^ Memoir, Vol. I, p. 237. 

'''"Maud," XVI, I. 

^^ Poems, p. 551. 

'^P. 566. 



DEMOCRACY AND PROGRESS 217 

To one who knows that such conditions as 
those just described actually prevail it is no won- 
der that in the city the great problems of human 
society seem to center. When the " smouldering 
fire of fever creeps across the rotted floor," it is 
evident that the problem most imperatively de- 
manding immediate solution is one of sanitation. 
In " The Village Wife " one whose daughter had 
died of fever said : " An I thowt 'twur the will 
o' the Lord, but Miss Annie she said it wur 
draains." ^^^ To drain the fen is as certainly a 
social service as to raise the school.^ ^^ The ig- 
norant in city and country are forever ascribing 
disease to the will of the Lord, and forever neg- 
lecting to whitewash their own cottages.*^® 
Even the leprosy was probably not a legacy of the 
crusades, as was commonly supposed, but was 
caused by meager and unwholesome diet, miser- 
able lodging and clothing, physical and moral 
degradation. ^^^ Such facts as these the poet did 
not allow his readers to forget, nor the other 
equally important fact that the health of the mind 
is involved with the health of the body.^^*^ He 
believed that the housing of the poor was one of 

"•P. 514- 

"■"'Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," p. 567. 

"'"The Promise of May," Act III, p. 795. 

"'Note, p. 825. 

""Memoir, Vol. T, p. 241. 



2i8 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

the great problems of human society. ^^^ The 
need of an intelligent study of the problem is 
indicated by such portrayals as that in " The 
Promise of May," where Dan Smith complains 
of the thin walls of the house in which as a serv- 
ant he is obliged to live, the broken windows 
which remain unmended even when the weather 
is intensely cold, and the " missus " in a precari- 
ous condition.^ ^^ Such ignorance of sanitary 
laws and of the hardships and sufferings of the 
poorer classes Tennyson deplored and sought to 
banish. 

Of crime and criminals the poet made no special 
or exhaustive study. Crime of various sorts is 
referred to, though not described in any fulness, 
in such poems as " Maud " and " Locksley Hall 
Sixty Years After." " Rizpah " records the life 
and hanging of one who robbed the mail. 
Crimes against women are especially condemned 
by the poet. King Arthur and the Knights of 
the Round Table always stood ready to defend 
helpless women who had been wronged by the 
ignoble. Robin Hood is praised as one who 
never wronged a maiden. ^^^ The rascal in " Sea 
Dreams " is most vividly depicted partly because 

*"Loc. cit., p. 249. 

***Act III, p. 795. 

'" " The Foresters," Act III, sc. i, p. 858. 



DEMOCRACY AND PROGRESS 219 

the character is drawn from a man who grossly 
cheated Tennyson himself in early life.^^* 

Different forms of punishment for violation 
of law are mentioned. Imprisonment was, of 
course, one of the most common. When Cran- 
mer was put into prison, he found nothing- to 
complain of in the prison fare.^^*^ On the other 
hand, Howard describes the horrible conditions 
under which certain prisoners were compelled to 
exist or to die, though these prisoners were here- 
tics, rather than disturbers of the social order. 

I have seen heretics of the poorer sort, 
Expectant of the rack from day to day, 
To whom the fire were welcome, lying chained. 
In breathless dungeons over steaming sewers, 
Fed with rank bread that crawl'd upon the tongue. 
And putrid water, every drop a worm, 
Until they died of rotted Hmbs; and then 
Cast on the dung hill naked, and become 
Hideously alive again from head to heel, 
Made even the carrion-nosing mongrel vomit, 
With hate and horror.*** 

Other terrible forms of torture are described 

in the fifth act of " Queen Mary." In the drama 

of " Harold," Guy says to Harold : 

In our oubliettes 

Thou shalt or rot or ransom."^ 

^** Memoir, Vol. I, p. 429. 

'*"' Queen Mary," Act IV, so. 2, p. 627. 

'""Act IV, so. 3, p. 634- 

'"Act II, sc. I, p. 662. 



220 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

In the biography mention is made of the fact that 
women who were found guilty of murdering their 
husbands, or of the other offenses comprised 
under the terms " high " or " petit treason," were 
pubHcly burned, by a law which was not abol- 
ished till 1790.^'*^ Punishment by transportation 
is also mentioned.^*® 

There is no evidence that Tennyson had ever 
studied carefully the relation of intemperance to 
crime, poverty, and social degradation. He was 
not an advocate of total abstinence, and was not 
averse to wine and beer, and similar drinks, for 
himself. It was not merely a poetic figure when 
he called upon all to drink to the health of the 
queen, to the " great cause of freedom " and " the 
great name of England ! " ^^^ There were times 
when he " yearned after a pint of pale ale." 
When he " drank scarcely any wine," it was a 
thing to be especially noted.^^^ He was disgusted 
enough when he saw the drunkenness at elec- 
tions,^'^^ when he saw riflemen get drunk every 
night, and squabble and fight and disgrace them- 
selves and their corps ; ^^^ but the cause of all 

^^^ Memoir, Vol. I, p. 7. 

^*^ Ibid., p. 290. 

'™" Hands All Round," p. 575- 

^"^ Memoir, Vol. i, p. 465- 

'''Ibid., p. 350. 

'"^Ibid., pp. 463, 464. 



DEMOCRACY AND PROGRESS 221 

this disorder and disgrace he apparently never 
discovered, nor did he discern its significance for 
social progress. One can but feel that this very- 
obvious limitation upon his usually clear vision 
was largely due to his own personal habits. He 
said on one occasion that the first time he met 
Robertson, he could talk of nothing but beer, 
stating, by way of explanation, that this was 
" from pure nervousness." ^^^ 

In the poems the whole subject receives scant 
mention, and this is one of the omissions that 
carry a message. To be sure, in " The Promise 
of May" the evils of workingmen wasting their 
wages at a pothouse are recognized, if not fully 
and powerfully pictured.^ ^° " The Northern 
Cobbler," ^^^ however, gives the most striking 
dramatic portrayal of the terrible results of the 
drink habit upon one who has become a slave to 
it. The old cobbler tells of his courtship and 
marriage, and of the happiness that followed until 
he was mastered by his passion for gin. Then 
he lost his customers, abused his wife and child, 
and injured his own household possessions. 
New light and life came to him. only when he 
resolved with all his might to quit his evil way, 
and bring back peace and happiness to his home. 

"*/&/(/.. p. 264. 

"'See especially Act III. 

"'P. 504. 



222 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

He bought a bottle of gin and placed it before 
him in the shop. Then he faced it every day 
and became its master, as before it had mastered 
him. This is a picture not to be forgotten; but 
the importance to society at large of the individ- 
ual problem which the old cobbler solved Tenny- 
son did not reveal to the world nor appreciate 
himself. In this he is simply one of the crowd. 
He did not understand that the results of scientific 
investigation into the facts declare unmistakably 
that this is one of the great problems of the day, 
which cannot be left to the tender mercies of 
squint-brained cranks and decrepit old women. 
No poet has yet arisen to do for the enslaved 
millions of the liquor habit what Harriet Beecher 
Stowe did for the negro in her imaginative prose. 
Tennyson was likewise born too soon to be 
greatly interested in the scientific administration 
of charity. He felt sincerely and deeply, so far 
as his knowledge went, the sorrows and sufferings 
of the poor, and pictured their condition and their 
needs with a sympathetic feeling that was genu- 
ine and strong. He praised those who gave of 
their substance to the sick and poverty-stricken. 
This praise was a part of the honor accorded 
Marie Alexandrovna, Duchess of Edinburgh, 
whose hand at home was gracious to her poor.^^'^ 
The divine ideals of service which were the glory 

"' " A Welcome," p. 225. 



DEMOCRACY AND PROGRESS 223 

of the Round Table impelled Arthur to say to 
Kay, the seneschal : 

Take thou my churl, and tend him curiously 
Like a King's heir, till all his hurts be whole.'"* 

There was nothing- nobler for the penitent, re- 
deemed Guinevere to do than to give the remnant 
of her life to the distribution of charity to the 
poor and the sick. Leonard, in " Locksley Hall 
Sixty Years After," is exhorted to follow the ex- 
ample of him who " served the poor, and built 
the cottage, raised the school and drained the 
fen." ^^^ Great admiration is given to Robin 
Hood, who, though he robbed the rich, gave gen- 
erously to the poor. This virtue was also promi- 
nent in the life of Akbar, who was said to have 
treated the poor for nothing. Tennyson com- 
mended the church for preaching and practicing 
this kind of charity, and giving to it all of the 
sanction of the religious motive. Cranmer was 
really speaking for the church when he said : 
" Give to the poor, ye give to God." ^^*^ 

The biographer declares that the poet reflected 
much upon the great movements of philanthropy, 
and his sympathy with them and with the gen- 
erous impulse from which they sprang is evident 
in his verse. He felt that the English country 

"'"The Last Tournament," p. 445. 

""P. 567. 

'™ " Queen Mary," Act IV, sc. 3, p. 632. 



224 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

gentlemen ought to be kinder to the poor, and 
said so plainly. ^^^ He thought of the poor espe- 
cially in cold weather, and feared that it would 
bring them great hardship.^ ^^ He thus helped 
to strengthen in English-speaking people the sense 
of obligation of the rich to the poor, and the 
impulse to charitable action. He was the friend 
and supporter of great philanthropic movements 
and institutions, and in his ow^n life practiced the 
principles he taught in his poems ; but of the great 
problems of indoor and outdoor relief he wrote 
nothing, because of these he himself had no 
knowledge. 

Tennyson believed in progress. He believed 
this to be the assured destiny of the race and the 
world. This is the fundamental tone in all his 
distinctive melodies. The doctrine of evolution, 
which he championed so zealously in science, was 
really his doctrine of the movement of the world 
and of all life. He was frank to say that, in his 
judgment, ruin attaches to everything material. 
To this degree he has rightly been called pessi- 
mistic. Even wisdom as such cannot withstand 
evil, as the conflict of Merlin and Vivien illus- 
trates. The beast in man and in the race must 
be worked out, if real progress is ever to be at- 
tained. It is only as the spiritual becomes dom- 

^^ Memoir, Vol. I, p. 243. 
^*'Ibid., p. 261. 



DEMOCRACY AND PROGRESS 225 

inant that the triumph of the higher is made cer- 
tain and genuine progress becomes a fact in the 
world. 

What has already been said concerning Tenny- 
son's appreciation of the great problems of the 
soul and of life, of poverty and suiETering and sin, 
of all the forces that seem to make for decay and 
ruin and death, is sufficient evidence that the poet 
did not overlook or ignore the stern facts of exist- 
ence in order to proclaim a hopeful doctrine of 
progress. The conditions that are portrayed in 
*' Maud " and the two " Locksley Halls" must 
have been clearly seen and deeply felt by Tenny- 
son before they could have been so vividly set 
forth. He saw realities, sad and disheartening 
as they were. He called upon all the Christmas 
bells to ring out the false, the grief that saps the 
mind, the feud of rich and poor, the ancient form 
of party strife, the want, the care, the sin, the 
faithless coldness of the times, the false pride in 
place and blood, the civic slander and the spite, 
the old shapes of foul disease, the narrowing lust 
of gold, the thousand wars of old, the darkness 
of the land. He did this in order to ring in the 
truth and love and peace of the Christ that is to 
he}^^ He knew that "the old order changeth," 
and oftentimes progress is retarded, and even 
takes a backward and a downward step; but in 

"'"In Memoriam," CVI, p. 277. 



226 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

the end " God fulfils himself " in the new order 
that comes to be established. 

If these discouraging facts are frankly faced, 
and at the same time the poet maintains a stal- 
wart faith in the ever-increasing triumph of the 
race and the final perfection of the world, he must 
have had a reason for the faith that was in him. 
What was that reason ? 

First, he believed that there are resident forces, 
as evolutionists say, in the world and in man 
which give assurance of progress. Though these 
forces are the abiding realities, they are not mani- 
fest to the one who does not look beneath the 
surface. They are perceived only by the one who 
has a passion for truth and who cannot be de- 
ceived by appearance. They are spiritual reali- 
ties and are spiritually discerned. These remain 
when bodies and forms and creeds and institu- 
tions pass into ruin and decay. When " the old 
order changeth," as change it will, it is only that 
its spiritual essence may pass on and on into some 
higher form. It is thus that "God fulfils him- 
self." 

Again Tennyson had great faith in time, and 
what it can do for the individual and the world. 
He had little patience with revolutionists of any 
kind. Those who expect all things in an hour 
were not of his ilk. He was not discouraged 
when men said : 



DEMOCRACY AND PROGRESS 227 

The world is like a drunken man, 
Who cannot move straight to his end — but reels 
Now to the right, then as far to the left."' 

In " The Ancient Sage " he asks : 

Who knows? or whether this earth-narrow life 
Be yet but yolk and forming in the shell ? '^° 

With time that " earth-narrow life " will broaden 
and reveal its essential nature and its highest mis- 
sion. The pessimist is such simply because he is 
blind. He sees failure and wreck and loss, and 
does not see the triumph to which failure is but 
the prelude. He does not see life in the large 
and the high achievement which only time can 
bring. In 1842 Tennyson wrote: 

My faith is large in Time 
And that which shapes it to some perfect end.^"* 

That faith grew stronger to the end of his life. 

Moreover, he believed that what has actually 
been wrought up to the present time is more than 
prophecy; it is evidence of " the far things to be." 
He had read history and science to good purpose. 
He knew what the past had been. Then he 
looked at his present, and saw what had actually 
been accomplished through the development of 
powers inherent in the world and life. 

164 " Queen Mary," Act IV, sc. 3, p. 634. 

"'P. 549. 

"'"Love and Duty," p. 93. 



1 



228 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

All the years invent ; 
Each month is various to present 
The world with some development/" 

Looking backward, and then at the present, he 
saw clearly the direction of the movement. 

All things move 

And human things returning on themselves 
Move onward leading up the golden year.'°* 

When he wrote, " That which they have done but 
earnest of the things that they shall do," ^^^ he 
was only affirming that for which most positive 
evidence had been adduced. Men are constantly 
achieving. The brain grows with using. There 
is nothing lost to man. 

So that still garden of the souls 
In many a figured leaf enrolls 
The total world since life began."" 

Then, since men are constantly attaining, and 
nothing is lost, progress is the inevitable conclu- 
sion. 

Lastly, and most comprehensively, Tennyson 
believed in God. No one can write any part 
of the philosophy of the great poet and leave God 
out ; for the presence and power of the Almighty 
in the world and society and the life of the indi- 

"'"The Two Voices," p. 31. 
"'"The Golden Year," p. 94. 
"°"Locksley Hall," p. loi. 
"»"In Memoriam," XLIII, p. 258. 



DEMOCRACY AND PROGRESS 229 

vidua! were an underlying principle in all his 
thinking. This fact revealed the order in seem- 
ing chaos, and the hidden purpose of experiences 
apparently meaningless and dark. When others 
were bewildered by failure and defeat he still 
walked in the light ; for he held 

That men may rise on stepping stones 
Of their dead selves to higher things. 

To those higher things God is forever calling his 
children, even out of the grave of their dead 
selves. Then no toil or suffering or sorrow 
stands by itself. It is a part of a larger whole, 
and gets its significance from its relation to the 
great consummation to which it contributes. 
I see in part 

That all, as in some piece of art. 

Is toil cooperant to an end."^ 

As it is with the individual, so it is with the great 
universe of which he is a part. " Thro ' the ages 
one increasing purpose runs." ^^^ That purpose 
is ever being accomplished, because above and be- 
yond all is 

That God which ever lives and loves, 
One God, one law, one element, 
And one far-off divine event, 
To which the whole creation moves.^" 

''^Ibid., CXXVIII, p. 283. 
"'"Locksley Hall," p. loi. 
"' " In Memoriam," p. 286. 



^ 



CHAPTER IX 
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 

We have seen that Hterature and sociology are 
mutually helpful to each other in their great and 
inspiring tasks. Sociology gives to literature 
facts concerning the social life of individuals and 
of classes, and in return literature gives to soci- 
ology a concrete and dramatic presentation of the 
condition and needs of the time it attempts to por- 
tray. The misapprehensions which literature 
creates, sociology corrects by a careful record of 
the results of scientific investigation into social 
realities. Literature gives life and power to facts 
which of themselves are inert and dead, and 
brings these facts to the knowledge of multitudes 
who would otherwise be ignorant of them. These 
two great departments of human effort are, there- 
fore, partners and not antagonists, each render- 
ing to the other a service that is of great sig- 
nificance and value. 

Literature is, however, only one of many docu- 
ments to which the student of society must give 
careful attention. It is the helper, but never the 
ruler, of the worker in the social realm. Only 
230 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 231 

as literature is true to the highest principles of 
its own art does it render a service for which 
the sociologist has any special reason to be grate- 
ful. When it attempts to " talk down," or be- 
comes contented with slovenly homilies, it does 
nothing except degrade itself in the eyes of all 
beholders. It must study and reflect the past, 
giving vividness and reality to that which the 
chronicler coldly states. It must record the posi- 
tive and the negative results of social experiments 
from which the principles of progress shall be- 
come more and more evident. It is a part of its 
mission to disclose tendencies which have not yet 
developed into recognized movements or alarm- 
ing facts. 

It is one of the special social functions of liter- 
ature to call attention to existing wrongs and 
to disseminate intelligence concerning abuses. 
Thus it becomes an advance agent of reform ; 
for no social wrong is ever righted until people 
are first made aware that a wrong exists, and 
made to fed the reality of the iniquity. It there- 
fore does most effective work in the first stages 
of a reform, and often is forgotten by the 
time the labor it inspired has resulted in correc- 
tive legislation or a more righteous custom. The 
breeze which fans the spark into flame is unre- 
membered when the attention of men is engrossed 
by the great conflagration. But when literature 



233 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

brings to self-consciousness the torpid, dormant 
society of its own day, it is rendering a social 
service of great magnitude. It cannot be ignored 
in any careful study of social forces. 

Perhaps, however, the greatest aid which liter- 
ature gives to the progress of society consists in 
its embodiment of the highest individual and so- 
cial ideals. Makers of literature are not, as a 
rule, successful makers of social programs. 
They are rather revealers of an idealism which 
may seem visionary and impracticable, but which 
is in reality a call to the noblest achievements. 
This call people cannot and will not ignore. This 
is a mighty force making for advancement in 
human society. By the artistic, imaginative pres- 
entation of facts, conditions, needs, and ideals, 
the writer of literature becomes a social educator 
and reformer of great importance in the society 
whose life he touches. 

Tt is therefore natural to expect that the writ- 
ings of Alfred Tennyson will have social as well 
as literary significance. He lived at a time when 
the changes in industry and society were many 
and great. The discovery of the motive power 
of steam was a prelude to social transformations 
that made the nineteenth century conspicuous in 
the history of the world. Factories were estab- 
lished, foreign and colonial commerce greatly in- 
creased. Political reforms were carried out by 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 233 

which the franchise was extended and poHtical 
tolerance gained for those of all religious faiths. 
Trades unions were organized and great co-op- 
erative schemes successfully launched. The age 
was marked by the growth of democracy, polit- 
ical liberty, and education. Our study reveals 
to us in part how the poet influenced, and was 
influenced by, this time of growth for the nation, 
of suffering for the poor, of marvelous change 
in social, industrial, and political life. 

In any theory of society the conception of man 
is fundamental. To Tennyson man is a being 
whom God has made in his own image. He 
has a distinct personality, however, which is 
spiritual in its essential nature and is free in will. 
He dwells in a body through which he is related 
to the beasts and all the lower orders of creation. 
He has therefore a twofold possibility. He has 
angel instincts, v^^hich make him like to God, and 
he has possibilities of sin and degradation which 
are terrible to contemplate. 

Man's duties and destinies are determined by 
his nature and his highest capacities. He has 
obligations to God, his Creator, and to man, his 
brother. Being true to these obligations, he 
moves toward the summit of his destiny, which 
is too high to be fully attained in one brief age, 
but demands an immortality. Man now is being 
made. He carries in himself the results of the 



234 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

evolution of the past and the prophecies of the de- 
velopments of the future. Such men as Prince 
Albert are actual illustrations of the practicability 
of these high ideals, and give to us a faith in 
" the growing purpose of the sum of life," the 
noble destiny of the individual and the race. 
This is the man who lives and aspires and 
achieves, who is the unit of the family, of the 
government, and of every social institution. 

Special importance attaches to the conception 
of woman in the social system. The society that 
cherishes a low ideal of the worth and mission of 
woman cannot itself attain a high mental and 
moral level. No woman created wholly by 
the imagination of Tennyson stands out from 
the company of her sisters as absolutely ideal. 
The noblest types of womanhood portrayed in the 
poems are taken from life and not from fancy. 
It is a significant thing that the poet found such 
women as Isabel in the world of the actual. He 
lays emphasis upon the fact that woman is not a 
lower species of man, but possesses her own na- 
ture and capacities, which should be developed in 
accordance with the laws of her own being. It 
is a mistake to speak of the man and the woman 
as either equals or unequals. They are diverse, 
and should have the education that will fit them 
to do in the best way the work to which they 
are called by their different tastes, capacities, and 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 235 

talents. Thus the poet lays great stress upon the 
noble power of woman in her sex-relations. 
The function of motherhood is exalted. This is 
a part of Tennyson's life-philosophy; for only in 
love and service can the individual attain his own 
highest development, and contribute his part to 
the progress of the race. This important and 
highly honorable place which woman occupies in 
the social body, makes the question of a higher 
education, which shall fit her to accomplish her 
mission in the noblest way, one of the great social 
problems of the age. To the careful study and 
intelligent solution of this problem the poet called 
the people of his time, with the strong conviction 
of the reformer and the skilful appeal of the 
artist. 

In the family the man and the woman come 
together in the primary social organization. 
Here it is necessary that the freedom of each be 
maintained, and at the same time that the good 
of society be subserved. To gain these ends, the 
marriage bond is a necessity. In every real spir- 
itual union this bond is not a burden. It is a 
seal of the happiness of two souls who are com- 
ing to their highest development, and finding the 
true riches of life, not in isolation, but in pure 
and holy union. If one suffers because of a hasty 
or unwise marriage, that suffering should be en- 
dured, rather than imperil the great interests of 



236 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

society by a disregard of the bond upon which 
the true social order depends. 

One distinct danger that society has to recog- 
nize and meet is that which comes from marriage 
for money, or rank, or policy. Here the poet 
held the mirror up to his time, and disclosed the 
direful results of degrading so sacred an institu- 
tion by such ignoble motives. The parties to such 
a marriage pay the penalty of this disobedience 
to the highest laws of spiritual union, and also 
degrade society of which they are a part. No 
one can read the poems of Tennyson which treat 
of this subject and be blind to the contempt he 
feels for the match which is barren of love and is 
prompted by selfish or unworthy aims. The 
marriage of true souls brings peace and happi- 
ness. If the persons are of unequal rank, the 
one of lower social position may find much in 
that fact to bring embarrassment and annoyance, 
but the love which is the heart of all true mar- 
riage is mightier than all distinctions of rank. 

The principle of heredity is of very great im- 
portance in the family and in society. The child 
is not only influenced by the physical and 
psychical life of the parents, but also influences 
in turn the home and the school and the church 
— in fact, the whole social body. The training 
of the child for his work in the world is 
a social as well as a parental duty. To take 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 237 

mothers, to whom especially the care and nurture 
of children are intrusted, from their homes to 
labor in mines and factories for the support of 
the family is, therefore, a wrong to the child, to 
the family, and to society at large. 

The ideal which one holds for society is largely 
determined by the ideal cherished for the indi- 
vidual. The universe is one, and to understand 
even the flower in the crannied wall is to know 
what God and man is. Each individual will is 
distinct and free, yet it has an eternal significance 
for every other. Good and evil are each, first 
individual, and then social. One's own country 
represents an extension of the family group, and 
for the advancement of the highest interests of 
this larger social organization the individual has 
a responsibility that is real and great. 

To love one's country sincerely and intelligently 
is a necessary preparation for participation in the 
still larger brotherhood of mankind. This uni- 
versal brotherhood is the true social ideal. The 
problem is to change the actual of the present into 
the ideal of the future. 

That is a problem whose solution is difficult; 
for today there are many barriers separating man 
from his brother, and dividing society into differ- 
ent, and oftentimes antagonistic, classes. The 
distinctions of rank are external, and are by no 
means always a mark of gentleness and worth. 



238 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

Rank and wealth help to divide class from class, 
and too often bring to their possessors the degra- 
dation which is born of luxury and excess, of false 
pride, and selfish disregard of the sorrows and 
sufferings of others. But, despite all that money 
can buy or titles can bring, joys and sorrows are 
common to rich and poor. Money and rank can 
do much less for a man than most people imagine. 
There are hardships which the poor alone suffer, 
and the principles of brotherhood lay upon the 
rich an obligation to give to their poorer brethren 
sympathy and aid. Poverty brings less actual 
suffering in the country than in the city, but wher- 
ever it is found, it gives to possessors of wealth 
the opportunity to sympathize and serve. This is 
the teaching of Tennyson's poems, and this was 
the practice of his life. 

V The poet never advocated the theories of com- 
munism. He did not believe in these himself, 
and when they are mentioned in his writings, it 
is only to reveal their foolish and impractical 
nature. He faced the gloomy facts of social and 
industrial life, but believed that these only im- 
posed the obligation upon all members of society 
to live together as brethren. Penetrating all dis- 
guises and all deceptive appearances, he found 
the cause of social unrest and suffering and dis- 
order in the selfish spirit that pervades society. 
When this ignoble spirit of selfishness is banished 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 239 

by the coming of the spirit of Christ, the spirit 
of love and service into human society, the vex- 
ing social problem will be solved and the millen- 
nial age will dawn. 

While society is advancing from a lower to a 
higher stage of development, institutions are a 
necessity. These represent ideas and exist to 
meet a need. Their forms are largely dependent 
upon the conditions of the time in which they are, 
and change as ideas advance or needs pass away. 
Institutions decay, but the spirit that gave them 
life and power passes on into new and higher 
forms. Here, as everywhere, it is the external 
and formal which is transient, the inner and 
spiritual that is eternal. 

The state is a social institution in which Tenny- 
son had special interest. He believed the Eng- 
lish government to be the best in the world, and 
had a peculiar horror of revolutions, and all sud- 
den and violent change in the established social 
order. He recognized the necessity of having 
able officials and a pure court; for the spiritual 
and the political are indissolubly united. Moral 
depravity means ultimate political ruin. In an 
hereditary monarchy the king may be a tyrant, 
and in a republic the crowd may be equally des- 
potic. Tennyson hated with equal fervor the 
tyranny of one and the tyranny of many. The 
queen was to him the ideal ruler, and in his 



240 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

noblest verse he voiced the inarticulate loyalty 
of the English people to their well-loved sover- 
eign. The monarch should be loved by the peo- 
ple, and in return for this loyal devotion he should 
give himself and his all to the kingdom he serves. 
In the government the statesman stands next 
to the ruler. It is his duty to understand the 
needs of the people, and become a real leader in 
the accomplishment of their worthiest ends. He 
will despise lying and every form of dishonesty, 
and seek above all things to know and live the 
truth. If statesman and people swerve from the 
path of honor, the poet, the man of vision, will 
recall all to truth and duty. In this way the poet 
and the statesman become partners in social serv- 
ice. Both these public servants should under- 
stand that in government, as everywhere else, all 
law is primarily internal and spiritual. It is writ- 
ten in the very nature of things; yet, to be of 
service to common men, it must have external 
expression. When the law is broken with im- 
punity by its subjects, no further evidence is 
needed of the decay of the government. Laws 
which only imperfectly express the principles of 
social order should be changed from time to time, 
as the ideas of people grow, and those inner and 
eternal principles are more perfectly revealed. 
All innovations should, however, come naturally 
out of the experience of the past and lead the way 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 241 

to higher achievements in the future. Every true 
statesman will be above the petty disputes and 
ignoble schemes of selfish factions. He will see 
the larger truths and be inspired by nobler aims. 

The church is a social institution only second 
in importance to the state. God is the funda- 
mental fact in the world and in life, and what 
men call religion is therefore a perfectly natural 
phenomenon. To make religion effective in prac- 
tical life is the mission of the church. Those 
who follow " wandering fires " miss what is vital 
and essential in religion. The church should 
have truth as its standard, and love as its inspir- 
ing spirit. Tennyson sought for the truth which 
underlies all religions, and he believed that all 
these are in their highest elements vitally related 
to Christianity. Thus he contended for a creed 
that is broad as the truth, and which expresses 
itself in deeds of love and service rather than in 
narrow dogmas. His creed is written into his 
poems, but was never formulated in labeled ar- 
ticles of faith. He believed in God, in Christi- 
anity, and the established church, though he stead- 
fastly refused to become a partisan of any creed 
or sect. 

The corruptions and weaknesses of the church 
and its representatives he pictured with fearless 
candor. The priest who robs the poor, and lives 
in luxury and idleness and excess, stands in 



242 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

marked contrast with the faithful servant of the 
church who boldly proclaims the truth, ministers 
to the poor and sinful, and brings comfort and 
solace to the sick and dying, Maurice and Rob- 
ertson were to him illustrations of what the 
clergyman should be and do in order to make the 
church a most efhcient agent in social progress. 

Progress, to be real, must mean the advance- 
ment, not of a favored class, but of the people as 
a whole. The question of the relation of democ- 
racy to progress is a very important and a very 
difficult one. In the poems the people are some- 
times pictured as foolish, passionate, and false; 
but even then they are capable of training and 
development. In the past they have been op- 
pressed and made to bear heavy burdens. It is 
not to be wondered at that they resented such 
treatment, and in time came to demand for them- 
selves justice and a fair share of privilege and 
of power. This demand does not mean that 
every man is the equal of every other in natural 
endowments, and should be equal in material pos- 
sessions. That is an absurdity. It does mean 
that every man should have a fair chance to be 
his best and to do what he is prepared to do. 

Education thus becomes a most important fac- 
tor in social progress; but this signifies much 
more than acquiring knowledge. True education 
will train one for the position in life he is destined 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 243 

to fill and will include the physical and spiritual 
as well as the intellectual. If it be true to its 
ideal, it will be pervaded by the spirit of love. 
It must give its blessings to the masses, that they 
may be prepared for the duties that are sure to 
come to them with the advance of the democratic 
idea. This gives special significance to the imi- 
versity-extension movement, and kindred schemes 
for the spread of popular education. The dis- 
coveries of science are vastly important in this 
new age. These teach us that the method of 
evolution is the true method of social progress. 
War for the defense of one's country or the right- 
eous cause is sometimes a necessity, and the male 
children should therefore be trained to defend the 
nation in time of peril as well as to serve it in 
time of peace. 

Tennyson faced the gloomy facts of life with 
genuine courage, and portrayed these in his 
poems; yet he was never a pessimist. He be- 
lieved that the future has much light to shed upon 
dark realities of the present. Of the special social 
problems he spoke with the freedom always ac- 
corded the poet. He pictured the attachment of 
landowners to their ancestral estates, the gains 
and perils of city life, the consequences of disre- 
gard of sanitary laws, the power of environment 
in the development of the man. the causes and 
effects of crime, the forms of punishment used, 



244 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

and the necessity and beauty of a noble charity. 
Concerning some important themes he is silent. 
Seeing clearly, as he did, the foes of progress, 
he yet remained to the end of his life a consistent 
optimist; for he believed in the innate powers of 
the man made in the image of God, in the revela- 
tions and blessings that time can bring, in the 
splendid prophecy of present achievements, and 
in the unfailing v^isdom and power and love of 
God. 

In conclusion, then, we may safely affirm that 
Tennyson has rendered to the world a distinct 
social service, by portraying with clearness and 
beauty and power the time in which he lived. 
Anyone possessing the poems of the great laureate 
has at hand data from which he may learn the 
physical and psychical and political and social 
facts of the time which the verses have for their 
theme. The historical plays and poems record 
the life of a former age, and thus furnish material 
for the social study of a past epoch. " Locksley 
Hall " gives a fine dramatization of a certain 
period in the history of England. The fact that 
Tennyson treats despair so frequently and fully 
shows clearly a condition of the time which is 
full of meaning for the student of society. In 
general it may be said that, from the year 1835 
until the year of his death, he based his poetry 
largely on the " broad and common interests of 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 245 

the time and of universal humanity," and such 
poems have permanent vahie in the social liter- 
ature of the age. The bitter experiences through 
which the cruelty of his critics caused him to pass 
gave him, after all, a deeper and fuller insight 
into the requirements of the time, and new power 
as a poet and prophet.^ Feeling as intensely as 
he did the " mechanic influence of the age, and its 
tendency to crush and overpower the spiritual in 
man ; " " interested as he was in science, politics 
economic invention, philosophy, theology, philan- 
thropy and reform, it is not surprising that these 
great themes entered into his writings, and made 
his verse a microcosm of the thought and action 
of his time.^ 

The value of what he has written is greatly 
enhanced by the fact that there is in it all an 
undertone of rational, intelligent optimism. As 
one who knew him well said of him : " He does 
not cry out against the age as hopelessly bad, but 
tries to point out where it is bad, in order that 
each individual may do his best to redeem it; 
as the evils he denounces are individual, only to 
be cured by each man looking to his own heart. 
He denounced evil in all its shapes, especially 

* Memoir, Vol. I, p. 123. 

* Ibid., p. 169. 
"Ibid., p. 185. 



246 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

those considered venial by the world and soci- 
ety." ' 

In such poems as " Lady Clare," " The Lord of 
Burleigh," " Locksley Hall," "Maud," and 
" Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," Tennyson 
has given statements of some of the varied phases 
of the social problem. But these are only illus- 
trations of the way in which this grave question 
enters into the writings of this great poetic 
genius. Even when he treats in a large way the 
war of sense with soul, as in " The Vision of 
Sin " and the " Idylls," he is portraying a con- 
flict which is not an incidental but a vital part 
of the problem that is vexing society. The cause 
of the social difficulty he believed to be the sel- 
fish spirit which pervades the whole frame of 
society. This spirit manifests itself in a thou- 
sand forms, but the problem is fundamentally 
one. What he considered the two great social 
questions then pending in England ("the hous- 
ing and education of the poor man before making 
him our master, and the higher education of 
women ") were to his mind simply the phases 
of the problem most imperatively demanding con- 
sideration at a given time. Linked with these 
questions are many, many others, any one of 
which may assume a relatively great importance 
with a change of social and industrial conditions. 

* Memoir, Vol. I, p. 468. 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 247 

The whole matter was one of very great serious- 
ness to him — so serious that it pained him to 
hear anyone speak lightly of it, even in jest.*^ 

While it is true that Tennyson did not formu- 
late a program warranted to cure all social ills, 
he did point out very clearly a principle which 
must be followed, if the problem is ever to be 
solved. The poems referred to in the preceding 
paragraph contain their own suggestions of the 
solutions of the problems they state. Commerce 
may do something to bring in the federation of 
the world. Even war for defense or liberty has 
its mission at a certain stage in the evolution of 
society. When the Chartist and socialist agita- 
tions were alarming the country, he believed the 
remedy was not in imprisonment, but in a wide- 
spread national education, in a more patriotic and 
less partisan spirit in the press, in a partial adop- 
tion of free-trade principles, and in an increased 
energy and sympathy among those who belonged 
to the different forms of Christianity.^ 

But he understood that such measures are only 
temporary expedients, which may ameliorate, but 
which can never cure, the social disorders. He 
at first thought, with Shelley, that the cause of 
social ills might be removed by lopping off those 
institutions in which the selfish spirit manifests 

^ Ibid., p. 205. 
''Ibid., p. 185. 



248 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

itself. He soon learned, however, that that 
method would not bring about the desired result. 
He became convinced that we must implant an- 
other principle, with which selfishness cannot co- 
exist — a principle that, by its superior attractive 
power, will draw to itself the virtue and strength 
which selfishness had before absorbed. In this 
way the greed which produces crime and misery 
and every form of social disease will be banished 
through the expulsive power of the new and 
stronger and nobler spirit.'^ In the individual 
and in society it is love which is this redemptive 
principle. It manifests itself in disinterested 
service of country and of fellow-men. This is 
the redemptive principle in " Maud." This is 
" the Christ that is to be." 

This may be called an attempt to solve the 
social problem by the power of an ideal. Be it 
so. It is an ideal that is thoroughly workable. 
It has a message for every individual, every fam- 
ily, every nation and all mankind. It is an ideal 
which is today actually uplifting our earth into 
the light. Telemachus is not the only one of 
whom it may be said : " His dream became a 
deed that woke the world. ^ In an age full of 
social wrong, it is true that 

^ Memoir, Vol. I, p. 69. 

• " St. Telemachus," p. 878. 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 249 

wildest dreams 
Are but the needful preludes of the truth.* 
The poet who can dream dreams of a diviner man 
and a purer and higher social state, and give to 
those dreams beauty and power in expression — 
such an one is rendering a service to society which 
is absohitely needful to the discovery and reali- 
zation of the higher truth. Because men have 
dreamed in the past, we of today are working for 
the freedom of the individual through the de- 
velopment of his highest capacities, for the per- 
fection of the family in the unity of love, for the 
purification of the nation through the unselfish 
efforts of citizen patriots, and for the parliament 
of man, the federation of the world. Because 
of those dreams, thousands of noble souls in many 
lands are proclaiming and living the doctrine: 
" All for each and each for all." ^" The poet has 
so won men to believe in the reality of his ideals 
that today there are unnumbered multitudes who, 
in spite of wars and rumors of wars, are looking 
forward with confidence to the time when " all 
men's good" shall 

Be each man's rule, and universal Peace 
Lie like a shaft of light across the land, 
And like a lane of beams athwart the sea 
Thro' all the circle of the golden year." 

'"The Princess," p. 217. 

""Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," p. 561. 

""The Golden Year," p. 95- 



250 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

Thus the poet who sees that the ideal is the real 
and who paints his visions and his dreams be- 
comes a mighty force, making for social prog- 
ress; 

For he sings of what the world will be 
When the years have died away.*^ 

""The Poet's Song," p. 124. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The books and articles to which the author is espe- 
cially indebted in the preparation of this volume are 
the following: 

Arnold, Matthew. Culture and Anarchy. 

Brooke, Stop ford A. Tennyson: His Art and Rela- 
tion to Modern Life. 

Carlyle, Thomas. Miscellaneous Essays. 

Cooke, Albert S. Tennyson's The Princess. 

Escott, T. H. S. Social Transformations of the Vic- 
torian Age. 

Francke, Kuno. Social Forces in German Literature. 

Genung, John F. Tennyson's In Mentor iam. 

Gibbins, H. DeB. The English People in the Nine- 
teenth Century. 

Graham, P. A. The Victorian Era. 

Harrison, Frederic. Studies in Victorian Literature. 

Harrison, Frederic. The Victorian Age. 

Luce, Morton. A Handbook to the Works of Alfred 
Lord Tennyson. 

Mackenzie, Robert. The Nineteenth Century: A His- 
tory. 

Rawnsley, Rev. H. D. Memories of the Tennysons. 

Ritchie, Anne Thackeray. Records of Tennyson, Rus- 
kin, Browning. 

Scudder, Vida D. The Life of the Spirit in the Mod- 
ern English Poets. 

Scudder, Vida D. Social Ideals in English Letters. 

Sneath, E. Hershey. The Mind of Tennyson. 

251 



252 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

Stead, W. T. " Character Sketch of Tennyson." Re- 
view of Reviews, December, 1892. 

Stedman, Edmund Clarence. Victorian Poets. 

Swanwick, Anna. Poets the Interpreters of Their Age. 

Tainsh, Edward Campbell. A Study of the Works of 
Alfred Lord Tennyson. 

Tennyson, Hallam. Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Me- 
moir by His Son. 2 vols. The Macmillan Co., 
1897. 

Tennyson, Alfred. The Works of Alfred Lord Tenny- 
son. Macmillan & Co., 1894. 

Van Dyke, Henry. The Poetry of Tennyson. 

Walker, Hugh. The Age of Tennyson. 

Walters, J. Cuming. Tennyson; Poet, Philosopher, 
Idealist. 

Ward, William G. Tennyson's Debt to Environment. 

Waugh, Arthur. Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Study of 
His Life and Work. 



INDEX 



Albert, Prince, 66, 67, 139, 148, 

234- 
Allen, James Lane, 32. 
Allinghatn, William, 62. 
Argyll, Duke of, 148, 202. 
Arnold, Matthew, 39. 

Beaconsfield, Earl of, 23. 
Bible, The, 157, 196. 
Blakesley, J. W., 122, 140. 
Brooks, John Graham, 9. 
Brotherhood, 103, 106, 108, 11 1, 

116, 119, 128, 133, 166, 238. 
Browning, Mrs. E. B., 43. 

Calvin, John, 168. 

Cambridge, 191. 

Carlyle, Thomas, 4, 46, 100. 

Catholics, 56. 

Chapman, Miss E. R., 67. 

Charity, 121, 222. 

Chartist Insurrection, 58, 149, 
196. 

Children, 53, 57, 77, 94, 194, 
236- 

Christ, 119, 122, 123, 167, 239. 

Christianity, 157, 241. 

Church, The, 61, 152, 160, i66, 
241. 

City, The, 96, 213. 

Clergymen, 171, 175, 242. 

Commerce, 55. 

Communism, 238. 

Constitution, Use of in Govern- 
ment, 186. 

Co-operative Movement, 57. 

Corn Laws, 51, 54. 

Corruption, in Government, 129. 

Cranmer, Thomas, 176. 

Creed, Tennyson's, 166, 241. 

Crime, 218. 



Dante, 43. 

Democracy, 58, 132, 178, 188, 

197. -239. 242. 
Dissenters, 56. 

Education, 59, 189, 197, 242. 
Edwards, Jonathan, 28. 
Elizabeth, Queen, 134. 
Emerson, R. W., 6. 
England, 103, 126, 207. 
Environment, 214. 
Equality, 181, 242. 
Evolution, 68, 69, 142, 203, 227, 
243- 

Factories, S3, 57. 

Fame, 169. 

Family, The, 82, loi, 236. 

Fielding, Henry, 8. 

France, 55, 104, 107, 127, 130, 

183, 207. 
Francke, Kuno, 40. 
Freedom, 83, 104, 136, 137, 147, 

151, 169, 194, 214, 237. 
French Revolution, 82. 
Future, The, 206. 

Gevaert, M., 26, 37. 
Goethe, J. W., 36. 
God, Tennyson's Idea of, 133, 

228, 241, 244. 
Government, 127, 130, 133, 142, 

239- 
Graham, P. A., 54. 
Grattan, Henry, 36. 
Green, Thomas Hill, 6. 

Hall, S. C, 174- 

Hallam, Arthur, 92, 116, 132, 

169, 191. 
Harrison, Frederic, 6, 7, 20. 
Harum, David, 28. 



253 



254 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 



Havelock, Henry, 67. 
Heredity, 97. 189, 236. 
Hill, Rowland, 56. 
History, 9. 
Homer, 34. 
Home, 43. 
Hugo, Victor, 107. 
Hunt, Leigh, 174. 

Ideals, 32, 36, 120. 212, 232, 

248. 
Immortality, 92. 
Innovation, 146, 240. 
Institutions, 124, 239. 
Intemperance, 220. 
Inventions, 50, 232. 
Ireland, 117. 
Italy, 104. 

Jowett, Rev. B., 203. 

Kemble, John, 128, 215. 
Kingsley, Charles, 166. 
Knowledge, 197. 

Land, 212. 

Law, 58, 140, 143, 240. 

Lawlessness, 146. 

Lincoln, Abraham, 44. 

Literature, difficulty of defining, 
4, 5; debt to sociology, 7; mir- 
ror of the times, 8; character 
of, 11; work it accomplishes, 
15; studies the past, 15; dis- 
covers principles of progress, 
17; calls attention to social 
evils, 21; relation to reform, 
22; brings society to self-con- 
sciousness, 24; expresses sense 
of injustice, 30; embodies in- 
dividual and social ideals, 32; 
helt)s create ideals, 36; meth- 
ods employed by, 41, 230. 

London, 128, 216. 

Louth, 194. 

Love, 92, 134, 137, 243. 

Machinery, 52. '< 

Man, 62, 69, 70, loi, 204, 233. 
Marriage, 83, 10 1, 112, 120, 236. 
Mary, Queen, 134, 137. 
Maurice, Rev. F. D., 60, is 7, 
164, 166, 168, 176, 216, 242. 



Milton, John, 43. 
Mines, 58. 

Money, 86, 106, in, 113. 
Morris, Wm., 61. 

Napoleon, 51, 55, 129, 150. 
Negative Results, 17. 
Novel, The, 44. 

Oastler, 58. 

O'Connell, Daniel, 56, 141. 
Optimism of Tennyson, 210, 
224, 244. 

Pamela, 3. 

Paris, 128, 151, 183. 

Parkhurst, Rev. C. H., 36. 

Parliament, 44, 53, 56. 

Parties, 148. 

Past, The, 15, 18. 

Patriotism, 106, 132, 237. 

Pauperism, 54. 

Pessimism, 208, 227, 243. 

Phelps, W. L., 29. 

Philippe, Louis, 128. 

Poet, The, 46, 82, 141, 240, 249. 

Poetry, 44. 

Policy, 87. 

Poor, The, 52, 109, 115, 188, 

217, 222. 
Pope, Alexander, 8. 
Postage, 56. 
Poverty, 95, 238. 
Pre-Raphaelite Movement, 61. 
Press, The, 113. 
Priests, 170, 241. 
Prisons, 219. 
Problem, Social, 108, 122, 189, 

217, 237, 243, 246, 247. 
Progress, 17, 102, 106, 145, 198, 

206, 213, 224, 228, 242. 
Protestants, 56. 
Punishment, 219. 

Rank, 91, 109, 114, 119, 237. 
Rashdall, Rev., 176. 
Reform Bill, si- 
Relief, 54, 121. 
Religion, 155, 168, 241. 
Religious Tolerance, 56, 61, 157. 



INDEX 



255 



Republic, 130. 

Revolution, 107, 127, 152, 182, 

226. 
Richards, Colonel, 197. 
Richardson, Samuel, 3, 8. 
Robertson, Frederick, 168, 177, 

221, 242. 
Rochdale Pioneers, 57. 
Romanes, G. J., 202. 
Ruskin, John, 14, 61. 

Sadler, 58. 

Sanitation, 217. 

Science, 69, 168, 200, 243. 

Scudder, Vida D., 7, 39, 40. 

Selfishness, 122, 239, 246. 

Self-sacrifice, 102. 

Sentiment, 24. 

Sex, 73. 

Shaftesbury, Earl of, 58. 

Simeon, Sir J., 100. 

Smith, Alexander, 169. 

Smith, Bos worth, 166, 186. 

Social Disorder, 122, 149, 196, 

247. 
Socialism, 19, 149. 
Society, 96, 118, 237. 
Sociology, 5, 11, 230. 
Spencer, Herbert, 19, 205. 
State, The, 126, 131, 239. 
Statesman, The, 139, 188, 240. 
Stead, W. T., 67. 
Stowe, Mrs. H. B., 44. 
Strike, The Dockers, 58. 
Swift, J., 8. 

Tendencies, revealed by study 

of past, 18. 
Tennyson, Alfred, Poems of — 
Aenone, 144. 
Akbar's Dream, 103, 121, 135, 

146, 156, 167, 201, 223. 
Amphion, 102. 
Ancient Sage, The, 97, 199, 

216, 227. 
Audley Court, 98. 
Aylmer's Field, 88, 109, 112, 

146, 150, 155. 183. 
Beautiful City, The, 128, 151, 

183. 



Balin and Balan, 64, 97, 162, 
189. 

Becket, 65, 78, 88, 110, 138, 
140, 145, 163, 164, 165, 171, 
174. 176. 

Beggar Maid, The, 93. 

Buonaparte, 150. 

Church Warden and the Cu- 
rate, The, 174. 

Columbus, 64, 162. 

Coming of Arthur, The, 135, 
136, 160. 

Cup, The, 181, 185. 
Day Dream, The, 89. 
Dawn, The, 69, 113, 206. 
Dedication, 134. 
Dedication of Idylls, 66. 
Defense of Lucknow, The, 

107, 212. 
Demeter and Persephone, 78. 
De Profundis, 63, 126. 
Despair, 118, 156, 167, 173. 
Dora, 94, 99. 
Doubt and Prayer, 154. 
Duke of Argyll, The, 139, 

148, 151. 
Edwin Morris, 75, 84, 173, 

216. 
Enoch Arden, 95, 114, 155. 
Epic, The, 172. 
Epilogue, 107, 212. 
Faith, 167. 
Flight, The, 85. 
Flower in the Crannied Wall, 

The, 102. 
Foresters, The, 85, 88, 105, 

109, III, 115, 133, 135, 14s. 

164, 165, 171, 213, 218. 
Freedom, 138, 147, 149, 151, 

187, 198. 
Gardener's Daughter, The, 90, 

98. 
Gareth and Lynette, 93, no, 

118, 136, 160. 
Geraint and Enid, 66, 130, 

136, 145, 209. 
Godiva, 98, 180. 
Golden Year, The, 113, 228. 
Guinevere, 66, 130. 
Hands All Round, 104, 132. 

140, 220. 



256 SOCIAL IDEALS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 



Harold, 66, 86, 131, i33. 138, 

140, 163, 167, 181, 189, 209, 

219. 
Higher Pantheism, The, 10 1, 

144. 153- 
Holy Grail, The, 69, 137, iSS, 

165. 
Idylls, The, 126, 131, 139. 148. 
In Memoriam, 62, 65, 68, 70, 

92, 93, 103, 113, 117, 120, 

144, 153, 158, IS9, 167, 168, 

x8i, 191, 199, 201, 204, 205, 

211, 214, 215, 225, 228, 229. 
In the Children's Hospital, 

158, 200. 
Isabel, 73. 

Lady Clara Vere de Vere, 91. 
Lady Clare, 92, 98, 108. 
Lancelot and Elaine, no, 136. 
Last Tournament The 64, 94, 

14s, 223. 
Locksley Hall, 68, 74, 94, 98, 

112, 146, 180, 187, 201, 228, 

229. 
Locksley Hall, Sixty Years 

After, 63, 64, 66, 96, 97, 

107, 109, IIS, 118, 128, 149, 

151, 184, 194, 206^ 207, 212, 

217, 223. 
Lord of Burleigh, The, 92, 98. 
Lotos Eaters, The, 89. 
Love and Duty, 63, 150, 227. 
Love Thou Thy Land, 129, 

147, 198, 211. 
Making of Man, The, 69. 
Margaret, 74. 

Marriage of Geraint, The, 63. 
Maud, 68, 93, 95, 96, 106, 

no, 113, 114, 118, 139, 153. 

165, 173, 203, 204, 208, 211, 

216. 
May Queen, The, 76. 
Mechanophilus, 199, 207. 
Merlin and the Gleam, 165. 
Merlin and Vivian, 179, 199, 

207. 
Miller's Daughter, The, 89, 

108. 
Morte D* Arthur, 125, 159, 

172. 
Northern Cobbler, The, 221. 
Northern Farmer, The, 88, 

US- 



Ode at International Exhibi- 
tion, 108, 143. 

Ode on the Death of the Duke 
of Wellington, 102, 105, 
127, 139, 184, 187. 

On the Jubilee of Queen Vic- 
toria, 121, 154, 201, 207. 

Palace of Art, The, 143, i8o. 

Passing of Arthur, The, 125, 

130, 137. 147. 153- 
Play, The, 208. 
Poet, The, 82. 

Princess, The, 64, 65, 75, 76, 

77, 84, 89, 90, 95, 117, 127, 

144, 14s, 153, 183, 188, 190, 

194, 199, 214. 
Promise of May, The, 68, 80, 

83, 85, III, 115, 119, 156, 

165, 190, 204, 209, 214, 218, 

221. 
Queen Mary, 79, 87, 104, no, 

112, 115, 119, 120, 131, 134, 

i37> 138, 162, 167, 171, 176, 

190, 200, 219, 227. 
Riflemen Form, 138. 
Ring, The, 74, 200. 
Rizpah, 145, 218. 
Sea Dreams, 109, 125, 173, 

216, 218. 
Sir John Oldcastle, 162, 171. 
Spinster's Sweet-Arts, The, 

95- 
St. Simeon Stylites, 178. 
St. Telemachus, 158. 
Talking Oak, The, 98, 161, 

216. 
Third of February, The, 105, 

127, 212. 
Tiresias, 132, 179, 184. 
Tithonus, 112. 
To J. M. K., 175. 
To Rev. F. D. Maurice, 117, 

164, 216. 
To the Queen, 112, 128, 129, 

131, 134, 187, 198, 206. 
To Victor Hugo, 107, 207. 
Two Voices, The, 205, 208, 

210, 228. 
Ulysses, 71, 214. 
Vastness, 179, 208. 
Village Wife, The, 156, 189, 

217. 
Vision of Sin, The, 63, 178. 



INDEX 



257 



Voice and the Peak, The, 65. 

Voyage, The, 123. 

Walking to the Mail, 91, 109, 
198. 

Welcome, A, 222. 

Will Waterproof, 210. 

Wreck, The, 84, 97, lot. 
Tennyson, Charles, 175. 
Tennyson, Emily, 128. 
Time, 227, 244. 
Torrijos, 152. 
Trades Unions, 57. 
Trevor, 61. 
Truth, 140. 

University Extension, 196, 243. 

Vere, Aubrey de, n6. 



Victorian Era, 7. 
Victoria, Queen, 54, 133, 138, 
239- 

War, 128, 129, 159, 211, 243. 

Waterloo, 51. 

Wellington, Duke of, 51, 67, 

139- 
Westcott, Bishop, 70. 
Will, Free, 67, 169. See also 

Freedom. 
William the Conqueror, 138. 
Women, 58, 60, 72, 76, 80, 218, 

220, 234. 

Wordsworth, 150. 
Zueblin, Charles, 49. 



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